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ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Books by 
LEWIS R. FREEMAN 


IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES 
Down THE COLUMBIA 
Down THE YELLOWSTONE 


‘THe Cortorapo RIvER 


Down THE GRAND CANYON 


ON THE RooF OF THE ROCKIES 











Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 


TOP OF CASTLEGUARD FALLS, MT. LYELL IN DISTANCE 





ON THE ROOF 
OF THE ROCKIES 


THE GREAT COLUMBIA ICEFIELD OF THE 
CANADIAN ROCKIES 


By LEWIS R. FREEMAN 





NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1925 


is 





iavhally as Botbale os een are 
pled “ \ Pea iy Ae | ‘ 

Y 2 TH the ed fe 
ih Fel Gof ch Nee’ he A 





Copyrran, 1925, F 
‘By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Ino. 


4 ot sh 





To 
BYRON HARMON 


WHO, THROUGH HIS PHOTOGRAPHS, 
HAS GIVEN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 
TO THE WORLD 





ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


The author desires to thank the Editor of the 
National Geographic Magazine for permission to re- 
print portions of an article which originally appeared 
in that magazine. 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
fees AND. AND THE OUTPIT .. °°. 38. Oe a 

Pee taeing Pp THE Bow .. 2.0 2 ee 20 
Pie mheinp THE SCENES OF SCENICS ©. .- . . « ‘40 
ivemtGow LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN. . °. 7. © 68 
MeeeCGRING WViUD AND FLOOD... << «4... « 89 
Srimriate GAME. AT CASTLEGUARD . .s 2). 4s ee 118 
hee e VLOTHeR OF RIVERS «©... 9s, «8 ww «6 I4d 
Miietcwer TO THe ARCTIC BASIN. . . +.» «)'» 168 
Peeiowm THE SUNWAPTA <..° 2. . . « « ~ 4/190 
ee AND DowN THE ATHABASKA .. . «. .--. 218 
XI Back THROUGH THE SNoWS OF BANFF... . 237 


[ix] 





ILLUSTRATIONS 


Top of Castleguard Falls, Mt. Lyell in distance Frontispiece 


FACING 
PAGE 


Harmon and his moving picture camera on Fortress Lake . 16 
Baptie and Freeman sunning the carrier pigeons. . . . 17 
Mee teemear epee at nicht 6. 26 ke a A ae. 32 


Mmneeaeretrattory horse... ee 3 
“Buster” riding a swimming pack horse. . . alo asl hie fe 
A deer, following the horses into Bow Camp, took Re ae 
Bretnelorcasion to ifispect the radio... 2. - 2 0. 3 39 
Giving “Buster” a dose of radio-casted jazz. . . . . 48: 
| Buster riding a pack to save his sore fect . . . . . 49 
euerusta alg. . 2... ich cece ici mae Cae ane 
Writing up radio notes at Bow Lake Cat Me aes ut eee 
Bow Lake Camp with Bow Glacier on sky line. . . . 64 
SEO ee ke ek ele ee Oe eG 


Crow’s Foot Glacier, looking across foot of Bow Take eng er 


Harmon mourns over the fragments of the radio “‘broad- 
Gener oven oucking pack horse’. 6) we oe ee 


Harmon coming out of a deep ford of the Saskatchewan. . 80 
Deep swimming ford at the forks of the Saskatchewan. . 81 
Pack train just entering an sa oad sha channel of the 
Saskatchewan .. OO 
North and South Twins (et) a Mt. Columbia fee 
Athabaska . . ea he 


Mt. Lyell (11,495 Pee ne Ca ae FE Rea 8G 


Resting pack horses, exhausted from fording, on the flats of 
Bea i ke hy I A RS ere Le 


[x1] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 


Where a thousand per second feet of water issues from a 
mountainside 


This three hundred foot falls, with a constant volume of 
possibly 1,000 feet per second, issues from a cave in the 


Jiao 


mountainside ee a. 
Fording Alexandra on foot to recover pack horses 36 
Setting up radio with aérial to tepee pole . Siren 
Avoiding a crevasse on the climb to Mt. Castleguard . 144 
Party on summit of Castleguard (10,096 feet) . . 145 


Wrangler Bob Baptie doing his stuff on a cliff of Castle- 
guard, 2,000 feet above Columbia Icefield . 


Packing radio on dog sled . ae 
Rough going across shallow crevasses on Saskatchewan Glacier 


Passing side glaciers while He eraae the eh of Saskatche- 
wan Glacier : 


Mt. Saskatchewan (10,964 Hee on Divide t to Bets of 
Saskatchewan Glacier . : 


White water in the box canyon of Ae fork of Saskatchewan 


“Soapy” Smith and Freeman listening in with radio set up on 
a stranded iceberg . : 


A baking powder tin and a coffee can as loud speaker whined 


. 146 
- 147 


158 


» 359 


:) {HO 


161 


176 


forth the early evening news . ee Wy 
Midway of the Athabaska Glacier . <2 192 
Top of Falls of the Sunwapta 08 
A rough, rocky ford of the Sunwapta . . 208 
Mount Athabaska from head of Sunwapta . . 209 
Looking up the Chaba valley to Continental Divide . Qa2 
Black Monk and Chaba Peak from Athabaska . . 298 
Mountain above junction of Chaba and Athabaska . 220 
Gorge below Athabaska Falls . ae i I 
Our camp at timber line under Mt. Aaa 5 eae. 


[ x11 | 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 


pie for the first clash between eee and New 
or 7a : 


When the sun first at eer on Mt. Columbia : 
The snowy wall of Fortress Lake . . .  . Following 


Looking down to west ieee aver end of Fortress 
2 . . Following 


Mt. Columbia (12,294 feet) shedding its hie mantle at the 


PAGE 


Lee oe 
ak 


234 


234 


end of eight days . . 235 
Maligne Lake : . 240 
Camp near head of Maligne aks : ~ 24t 
Maligne Lake. View from west shore . ee 
Above narrows of Maligne Lake . ESAs 
Setting up tepee at foot of Maligne Lake . . 248 
In deep snow on the Poboktan . 249 


A landscape of snow and ice. ‘The horses were brought 
through miles of these drifts . ; 


Looking toward the Brazeau from Jonas Pass . 


Looking down valley of Jonas Creek to Sunwapta from Jonas 
Poboktan Divide ee 


Descending from pass to upper Jonas Creek . 
Heavy going on the climb to Cascade Pass He eo 
Climbing up to White Rabbit Pass . . .  . Following 
In the snows of the Ram Creek . . . .. . Following 


The amphitheatre-like massif of Mt. Coleman, with Pinto 
Lake in foreground . ie =, ea Cerca. 


[ x11i | 


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. 256 


s 257 
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On the Roof of the Rockies 


CHAPTER I 
THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


IT is a strange fact that one of the first regions of 
the Canadian Rockies to be visited by a white ex- 
plorer was also one of the last to be scientifically ex- 
plored and comprehensively photographed. ‘This is 
the land of tall peaks and glacier choked valleys 
about the head of the Athabaska, where is found 
what may fairly be rated as the most striking Alpine 
scenery of the Western Hemisphere. 

David Thompson, the eminent astronomer-explorer 
of the Northwest Company, who was later to run the 
Astors so close a race for the establishment of the first 
fur-trading post on the Pacific coast of what is now 
Oregon, crossed the continental divide during the 
first decade of the nineteenth century by following 
the Whirlpool branch of the Athabaska to its head 
and descending to the Big Bend of the Columbia by 
a stream he named the Portage River and which is 
now called the Wood. The trail thus blazed by 
Thompson later became the main transcontinental 


[1] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


route of the Hudson’s Bay traders between the great 
Canadian plains and their posts on the upper and 
lower Columbia. The waters of “The Achilles of 
Rivers,” swift and turbulent but still navigable for 
well handled bateaux, were available for the voy- 
ageurs to run or to breast for the thousand miles or 
more below Boat Encampment at the northern apex 
of the Big Bend. 

Thus it chanced that a thin but fairly steady 
stream of travel flowed back and forth across the con- 
tinental divide at the head of the Athabaska during 
the half century or more that the remainder of the 
extensive area covered by the Canadian Rockies was 
rarely visited by white men. It was doubtless for 
this reason that the narrow zone of mountains im- 
mediately under the eye of the traveller was elevated 
to a prominence somewhat beyond its due. Ex- 
plorers and pioneers of all time have been wont to 
stress the wonders of what they have discovered or 
seen and to discount those of the regions beyond their 
ken. 

Conservative geographer that he usually was, Da- 
vid Thompson estimated the height of the two peaks 
flanking Athabaska Pass to north and south as 18,000 
feet. This was arrived at by figuring the summit of 
the pass as 11,000 feet according to the boiling point 


[2] 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


of water, and the tops of the peaks as 7,000 feet above 
the pass. David Douglas, the Scotch botanist who in 
1827 named the two peaks in question Mount Brown 
and Mount Hooker, respectively, perpetuated 
Thompson’s error as to height, and furthermore char- 
acterized them as the two highest peaks yet known on 
the continent of North America. Travellers by the 
old Hudson’s Bay trail, unduly impressed by the 
twin sentinels of Athabaska Pass after their long 
traverses of the level plains, kept alive the early over- 
estimates of height. School geographies studied by 
many people now living listed Mount Brown and 
Mount Hooker as the highest peaks in North 
America. As a matter of fact, of course, neither 
peak is greatly in excess of the 11,000 feet of Thomp- 
son’s original estimate of the altitude of Athabaska 
Pass. ‘There must be several hundred higher peaks 
on the continent, and two or three with summits 
nearly 10,000 feet in excess of the altitudes of Brown 
and Hooker. 

Intent almost solely on finding the lowest passes 
and the easiest routes of travel the early traders and 
trappers must have been almost if not quite ignorant 
of the existence, but a few miles to the south, of what 
has since been proven to be the most extensive ice- 
field on the continent outside of the arctic and sub- 


[3] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


arctic regions of the far north. ‘They were under the 
very drip of the eaves of this great continental 
ice-shed when they tried to establish a new route to 
the Columbia by the Chaba branch of the Athabaska 
and the silver gorge of beautiful Fortress Lake which 
sits on the divide and drains both ways. When they 
failed here to find a better pass than that by the 
historic “Punchbowl,” at the head of the Whirlpool, 
where the Hudson’s Bay factors were wont to ren- 
dezvous and transact the business of the East and the 
West in lurid week-long carousals, the glittering 
ice-caps gleaming green against the skyline to the 
south must have told them that there was no use 
venturing farther toward the heads of the two main 
forks of the Athabaska. With lines of lofty peaks 
whose heads were rarely clear of crowns of clinging 
clouds, and with every mountain valley pouring 
down its frigid finger of glacier from a mighty 
mother icefield far above, they did not need to ex- 
plore further to know that here was a barrier more 
formidable than any they had encountered to the 
northward. ‘They were well advised to seek no far- 
ther in this direction. With the complete topo- 
graphical data of the present day no better route 
could be found for the traveller by foot and by boat 
between Hudson’s Bay and the Pacific than that 


[4] 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


blazed by the early trappers and traders. And, 
moreover, not to this day has a practicable way ever 
been found from the western drainage of the Colum- 
bia Icefield to the Columbia River, rumbling in its 
cliff-walled gorge six to seven thousand feet below. 

The later and more extended explorations of the 
latter half of the nineteenth century avoided the 
Columbia Icefield region for the same reason as had 
those of the trappers and traders—passes were sought 
for, not barriers. Railways needed lower passes and 
easier approaches than had footmen and pack-trains, 
while a cliffy gorge like that of the upper Columbia 
where it loops round the Big Bend was an obstacle 
rather than a help. For these reasons the surveyors 
of the transcontinental lines found that the most 
favourable natural routes lay far away from the lofty 
ice-capped plateau where three of the greatest rivers 
of the north took their rise. So the Canadian Pacific 
blasted its way through the Rockies and Selkirks 
from eighty to a hundred miles south of the Colum- 
bia Icefield, while the Grand Trunk—later the 
Canadian National—found a lower and easier route 
as far to the north. The careful studies for neither 
line added little if any knowledge of the still un- 
trodden heights of the cold ice-locked terra incognita 
between. 


[5] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


On account of the difficulties and dangers at- 
tendant upon travelling with pack-trail in regions 
scarred by torrential mountain streams and exposed 
to the threat of slides of snow and rock, with swamps 
and stretches of treacherous glacial mud in the val- 
leys, the first trails opened up in the Canadian 
Rockies for the benefit of the hunter and the camper 
were confined to the safer and more readily attain- 
able regions near the railways. Mountain climbers, 
seeking for a vantage from which to attack the un- 
scaled heights of the continental divide, were forced 
to cut their own trails through the standing and 
fallen timber and to scramble over rocks and slides 
as best they could above the line of vegetation. 
Much or all of such a trail might never be used 
again. Keen and trained observers for the most 
part, these courageous and indefatigable Alpinists 
added more to the knowledge of the high Canadian 
Rockies during the first two decades of the present 
century than accrued from organized scientific ex- 
ploration. Their work was fragmentary and unco- 
ordinated, however, and it was not until the late 
Interprovincial Survey completed its labours along 
the continental divide between Alberta and British 
Columbia that definite and dependable data of this 


[6] 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


hitherto almost unknown region finally became 
available. 

Among many valuable geographical and topo- 
graphical facts revealed by the work of the Inter- 
provincial Survey, perhaps nothing was received, 
even by those who knew the Canadian Rockies, with 
so much surprise and interest as the statement that 
the Columbia Icefield, formerly not known by name 
to one in a hundred thousand, had an area in excess 
of 150 square miles. Perhaps of even greater ap- 
peal to the imagination was the revelation of the 
hitherto little appreciated fact that drainage from 
this single icefield flowed to three major oceans— 
that it was almost certainly the only instance in the 
world where such great dispersion of water from 
a common source occurred. 

The Columbia Icefield may be roughly likened to 
a stockily built octopus, with the main mer de glace 
forming the body and the creeping, down-crawling 
glaciers the tenacles. Completely surrounded by 
peaks varying in height from 10,000 to over 12,000 
feet, the icefield itself is comparatively smooth and 
level, many square miles of its centre, indeed, being 
not more rolling than an undulating plain. The 
average elevation, exclusive of the tentacles of glacier 


[7] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


which extend down not far from the 6,000-foot con- 
tour, is about 8,500 feet above sea-level. Its great- 
est elevation is a hummock of 8,884 feet somewhat 
north of its centre. Here, at a point not clearly 
defined to the eye but probably of very small area, 
occurs the remarkable three-way split of the con- 
tinental drainage. Where the tip inclines westerly, 
the water runs by the Bush to the Columbia and 
thence to the Pacific. ‘The meltage from the north- 
erly slope may run to either of the main branches 
of the Athabaska, and so on to the Great Slave Lake 
and down the Mackenzie to the Arctic. The east 
and south slopes drain to separate branches of the 
Saskatchewan which, uniting twenty-five miles be- 
low, ultimately mingle with the brine of the Atlantic 
in Hudson’s Bay. 

Striking scenically, unique topographically, and 
barely explored, the Columbia Icefield has few 
rivals in the world to-day in its attractions not only 
for the alpinist but the lover of the out-of-doors as 
well. The present article is a plain workaday ac- 
count of the first attempt to make a comprehensive 
collection of photographs—moving and still—of this 
wild and wonderful region. I shall hardly need to 
add that all of the best of the story will have to be 
told by the pictures. 


[3] 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


Even from the days when the carrying and opera- 
tion of the cumbersome wet-plate outfits presented 
almost prohibitive problems of transport, the camera 
has played a prominent and increasingly important 
part in passing on to the older world the record of a 
new found land. The explorer photographs as he 
goes, but, handicapped by haste and the limitations 
of transport in a wilderness, almost always hurriedly 
and taking things as they come. The surveyor, 
when his time comes, works more carefully but only 
in the narrowly restricted field bounded by topog- 
raphy and perhaps geology. The last to come but 
the longest to stay is the artist—the nature photogra- 
pher. He, like the settler who follows Kipling’s 
“Explorer,” “remains to occupy.” 

Unlike the explorer or the surveyor, the nature 
photographer cannot block out a region on the map 
and say, “When I have covered this area my work is 
complete.” He can cover all of Nature’s subjects 
but never reach the end of her moods. And the 
recording of moods—the savagery of the mountain 
torrent which grinds down and engulfs the tongue of 
forest that blocks its way; the perversity of the peak 
that hides its head in a veil of cloud—is his most 
subtle vehicle of expression. 

A life-span is all too short for the artist who would 


[9] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


picture, either with brush or camera, a land or a race. 
Curtis has given the best of many decades to pho- 
tographing the passing Indian of the Northwest, 
as has Carl Moon to his record of those of the South- 
west. The magnificent photographic record of 
Yellowstone Park, started fifty years ago by F. Jay 
Haynes, is being added to to-day by his son Jack. 
Byron Harmon’s successful expedition to photo- 
graph the Columbia Icefield last summer and fall 
is the crowning achievement of twenty years spent 
picturing the Canadian Rockies, but it does not 
mark the end of the work. 

Long familiar with Byron Harmon’s fine studies 
of the Canadian Rockies, my first personal meeting 
with him was late in the summer of 1920. This was 
at a camp on the iceberg-battered shores of that in- 
comparable mountain gem, the Lake of the Hanging 
Glacier, where I had journeyed by pack-train pre- 
liminary to pushing off on a boating voyage which 
was to carry me practically the whole length of the 
Columbia. In my log of that voyage I find this 


meeting recorded in the following entry: 


“Descending to the timber-line meadow where the 
horses had been left, we found Byron Harmon had 
brought up his outfit and pitched camp midway of 
an enchanting vista framed in green-black pines and 


[10] 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


golden larch, with a wonderful background for 
‘camp-shots’ both up and down the valley. There 
he was going to make his base, he said, until he found 
just the light that was needed to set off the Lake of 
the Hanging Glacier. Then he hoped to get at 
least one or two negatives that would do something 
approaching justice to so inspiring a subject. And 
there, working and waiting patiently through an 
almost unbroken succession of storms that raged in 
the high Selkirks for many days, he held on until he 
got what he wanted. It was in that quiet, patient, 
persistent way that he had been photographing the 
mountains of the Canadian West for many years, and 
it will be just in that way that he will continue until 
he shall have attained somewhere near to the high 
goal he has set for his life-work—a complete photo- 
graphic record of the Rockies and Selkirks. Itisa 
privilege to have met an artist who works with so 
fine a spirit, who has set himself so high an ideal.” 


Something of his work—what he had done and 
what he still hoped to do—Harmon told me in the 
forty-eight hours we were snowbound together in 
the first storm of the early closing winter. ‘That was 
his sixteenth year in the Canadian mountains, he 
said, and in this time he made winter and summer 
photographs of most of the outstanding peaks, 
glaciers and valleys of the Selkirks and Rockies. In 
four years more he hoped to have photographed 


[11] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


them all, and then, in the light of what he had 
learned, he would start in and do them all over again 
—try to do them better. 

It was on this occasion that I first heard of the 
Columbia Icefield. Harmon had never seen it him- 
self, but had heard enough of it from mountain 
climbers who had made ascents within sight of it to 
rate the region as probably the finest scenically in all 
the Rockies. Because it was remote and difficult to 
reach, he was saving it for the last—the summer of 
his twentieth year of photographing in the Rockies. 
With a properly equipped expedition, and by taking 
plenty of time, he hoped to be able to cover all of 
region along the continental divide where he would 
not have hitherto worked with his cameras. 

Early in the spring of 1924 Harmon wrote to tell 
me that he had managed to maintain his photogra- 
phic schedule during the preceding three years, and 
that there now remained only the Columbia Icefield 
region to picture to complete his original program 
for the Rockies. This he hoped to do during the 
coming summer and fall. Preliminary organization 
of the expedition was already under way, and he 
was writing to ask me to come along and help make 
the moving picture film. With a jaunt of my own 
already planned, which contemplated driving a 


[t23 te 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


small motorboat from Chicago to New York by way 
of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, some re- 
arrangement of schedules was necessary to make both 
trips possible. Ultimately, by hard and steady push- 
ing through the stormiest early summer the Great 
Lakes have known in many years, I was able to 
dock in New York in time to swing back to Canada 
and arrive at Banff by the rsth of August. The 
pack-train was already assembled at a camp on the 
Bow near Lake Louise, and there we joined it the 
following day. 

Roughly speaking, the route laid out in advance 
called for following the Bow River to the lake and 
glacier of the same name at the continental divide, 
thence paralleling the divide as closely as topography 
would permit until the Columbia Icefield was 
reached at the head of Castleguard Valley. After a 
month of work on or near the icefield, including the 
crossing of one spur of it with the pack-train and the 
circling round to the head of the Athabaska, under 
Mount Columbia, on its northern side, winter clothes 
and supplies would be picked up at Jasper and the 
return journey of two hundred miles to Banff made 
by the best available route through the early snows. 
It was expected that from ten to twelve weeks would 
be necessary to complete this itinerary. Enforced 


bid 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


waits for favourable picture weather and the fact 
that nothing worthy of the name of trail would be 
available for more than inconsiderable sections was 
responsible for allowing what may seem like an un- 
due amount of time to cover a total distance of not 
much over 500 miles. 

Two features of the proposed itinerary as ex- 
plained before departure impressed me—so far as 
my own experience of pack-train travel went, that is 
—as verging closely upon the impossible. These 
were the plan to take the horses across the icefield 
and the expectation of travelling for two or three 
weeks of the return journey through a region of 
high elevation, where not only the passes, but many 
of the valleys as well, would be deep in snow. As 
to the icefield traverse, I was told that such a crossing 
had been safely made the previous summer by the 
pack-train of a mountain climbing party and that 
there was therefore no reason to believe it could not 
be done again, especially as one of our packers had 
been with the pioneer outfit. As for the long snow 
journey, Harmon thought the rigours of it worth 
facing for the fact that neither moving pictures nor 
stills had been previously made of such a winter pas- 
sage over the high Rockies. It would probably be 
attended with some losses, and it was quite possible 


[14] 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


we would have to turn back or follow one of the 
easterly valleys out to the plains; but, with all of the 
horses habituated to pawing for grass on the winter 
ranges, the chance was worth taking. 

With every reason to expect that the trip both 
going and returning—the former on account of high 
water and ice, and the latter on account of heavy 
snows—would prove one of the most severe ever 
attempted by a pack-train in the Canadian Rockies, 
great care had been taken that the outfit, both as to 
personnel, stock and equipment, should be the very 
best that could be assembled. With years of per- 
sonal acquaintance among the guides and packers of 
the Rockies, Harmon had picked the three men best 
suited to the special needs of the expedition. ‘These 
were informed in advance of the plans and itinerary, 
and warned that the picture work would inevitably 
be responsible for delays, difficulties and discomforts 
not usually encountered on the regular hunting and 
camping trips. ‘They were all mountain men of long 
experience, and one of them, La Casse, was well 
acquainted with the region to be traversed as far as 
the Columbia Icefield and on to the Athabaska Gla- 
cier and Wilcox Pass. 

The horses, picked long in advance, had been kept 
off the trail all summer to conserve their strength for 


[15] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


the arduous and punishing work ahead. This was a 
most fortunate circumstance, for the long weeks of 
semi-starvations in the snows of the early winter, 
with endless hours of desperate floundering in the 
deep snows of the high passes, demanded all their 
stored up stamina to bring them through. 

The photographic outfit was complete in every 
respect. Besides the moving-picture camera, with 
its varied assortment of lenses, Harmon and I had 
each two still cameras. ‘There was 8,000 feet of 
moving-picture film, with as much roll and cut film 
for the other cameras as there was any possible 
chance of using. The moving-picture film and my 
own roll films were carried in sealed tins. Har- 
mon’s huge reserve of cut films, by some oversight, 
was sent in ordinary wrappings, a fact which was 
responsible for much anxiety in the days of mud and 
high water. 

The only real weakness in the outfit was its lack 
of water-tight boxes and bags. The pack-boxes in 
which the moving-picture camera and its accessories 
were catried furnished adequate protection from 
the blows of rocks and trees but would not exclude 
water. Neither would any of the grub-boxes nor 
the sackings of the food supplies. As a consequence, 
when we were shortly confronted by unexpectedly se- 


[16] 





Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 


HARMON AND HIS MOVING PICTURE CAMERA 
ON FORTRESS LAKE 





Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 
BAPTIE AND FREEMAN SUNNING THE CARRIER PIGEONS 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


vere high water, we lost more supplies in two days 
than the recent Geological Survey expedition lost in 
its three months’ voyage through the rapids of the 
Grand Canyon. Even at that, however, we were 
never seriously handicapped by a shortage either of 
food or photographic supplies. 

With luxuries cut to the bone as a consequence of 
the fact that no replenishment of supplies would be 
possible inside of six or eight weeks, our only real 
frills were the radio and its satellites, the carrier 
pigeons and the typewriter. The little portable Ra- 
diola was my own idea, born of the memory of the 
real entertainment the Grand Canyon party had had 
from a similar outfit a year previously. After get- 
ting the best technical advice available on the possi- 
bilities and limitations of radio under the conditions 
we could expect to encounter, J had bought the set 
in New York and brought it on to Banff. Here we 
had a pack-box hastily built around the little black 
case and the block of batteries connected up for us by 
the local electrician. 

The carrier pigeons were Harmon’s idea. He 
had been breeding homers at Banff for a year or two 
but had never had a chance to try them out in the 
mountains. The present opportunity was too good 
to be missed. Besides, there was always the chance 


[17] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


that we would be glad of means of getting out word 
by air in the event communication along the surface 
of the earth became impracticable. The birds 
would also prove a useful medium for reporting on 
radio conditions, several powerful stations having 
promised to make special efforts to reach us in the 
event the Rockies area did not prove entirely “dead,” 
as there had been some reason to believe. 

Neither Harmon nor myself knew any more about 
carrier pigeon technique than we did of that of ra- 
dio. About all we could learn locally was from an 
old children’s bird book, which informed that the 
door of the cote should be of valve-like construction, 
permitting the ingress of the returning bird but not 
the egress. Also that the boxes in which the pigeons 
were carried should be provided with holes large 
enough to admit plenty of air but not so large as to 
allow the birds to escape before their time. Both 
of these admonitions seemed quite reasonable. Less 
convincing was the instruction that the message 
should be written on waterproof oiled paper and 
wrapped securely to one of the bird’s tail feathers. 
As the only line I had on this particular point was 
the somewhat hazy memory of the picture on a child- 
hood valentine of a dove with a very plump packet 
dangling from its neck, I was somewhat diffident 


[18] 


THE LAND AND THE OUTFIT 


about disputing the practicability of the tail-feather 
plan. A self-constituted local pigeon expert told us 
a number of other esoteric practices to follow, but as 
the most probable of these had to do with taking 
along a fragment of the home roost for the bird to 
smell before being launched on its return flight, we 
did not give them serious consideration. 

We did lay in a stock of oiled paper, however, on 
the theory that it might better resist the disintegra- 
tion of possible fogs or rains. Fortunately we tried 
it out before starting, and so learned that even the 
softest pencil point would skid along on the polished 
surface without leaving the vestige of a mark. And 
that was why my little folding Corona was requis- 
itioned to fill the breach at the last moment. A 
sharply struck key left an impression on the tough, 
smooth paper which resisted blurring even under the 
hard rubbing of a moist finger-tip. 


[19] 


CHAPTER II 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


DRIVING over from Banff to Lake Louise railway 
station toward noonday of August 16th, Harmon 
and I found our camp in the willows by the Bow 
occupied only a dozen hungry pack-horses tethered 
among piles of hastily dumped gear. Evidently a 
cog of a wheel of our well-oiled plans had slipped. 
What the trouble was transpired an hour later when 
“Soapy” Smith, owner of the outfit and head-packer, 
rode in to announce, in language more picturesque 
than polite, that two of his horses were missing and 
that he feared they were back-tracking it to their 
natives ranges in the eastern foothills. Rob, the 
wrangler, and “Ulus,” the cook, were trying to trail 
the fugitives, but unless they came back within the 
hour a start that day was out of the question. Har- 
mon, cheerily philosophical, replied that it would 
suit him just as well to get under way in the morning 
and suggested a drive up the mountain to Lake 
Louise to fill in the interval. 

An irate packer telling the world and a consider- 


[20] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


able portion of the adjacent solar system just what he 
thinks of the ancestry of his strayed cayuses is not 
exactly at his best, from a polite and refined stand- 
point, that is. And yet my first impression of our 
head-packer was unmixedly favourable. Spectacled 
and with the long drooping moustaches of a moving 
picture sheriff, one of his friends had described old 
‘“‘Soapy” to me as a cross between Theodore Roosevelt 
and a bull walrus. It was my instinctive feeling 
that the man who was to guide our material destinies 
for the next three months combined many of the best 
elements of both of these virile prototypes that in- 
clined me instantly in his favor. ‘Too, I liked the 
technique of his profanity—words winged with fire 
but flowing with the easy, effortless inevitability of 
the spinning of the turbine of an ocean liner. Free 
natural swearing meant a well driven, well treated 
pack-train. One of Nature’s own swearers is also one 
of Nature’s own gentlemen. That truth had been 
driven home to me through years of experience. [ 
have never known a packer who swore freely and 
naturally to beat a horse cruelly. Yes, I took to old 
“Soapy” Smith at once, even though his name had 
been borrowed bodily from a notorious gambler and 
confidence man who had won what was pretty nearly 
my last dollar on the ‘“‘pea-and-walnut” trick in 


[21] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Skagway the week before he was shot by a Klondiker 
from whom he had lifted a cool ten thousand. 

It was nearly dark before Rob and “Ulus,” tired 
but undispirited after their bootless search, straggled 
back into camp. This again proved good stuff. A 
man who can return with a smile after twelve hours 
spent in trying to pick up the tracks of strayed horses 
is only a little lower than the angels. 

Rob Baptie was a typical Canadian Rockies wran- 
gler. lLithe, slender, quick on his feet and with a 
fine bridle hand, he already had made a name for 
himself in the local round-ups. The horse was his 
alpha and omega, the mainspring of his existence, 
the shimmer on the wings of his dreams. He could 
ride right down the line of the string of a passing 
trail outfit, call every animal by name, and tell you 
just what caused the rope burn on the off hind fet- 
lock of the little flea-bitten roan straggling in the 
rear. He could no more keep his eyes from roving 
over a fine bit of horseflesh than a Broadway 
“Johnny” can prevent his optics from pricking a dot- 
ted line to the ankles of a passing chorus girl. All 
of which went to prove that Rob, like “‘Soapy,” was 
of the kind that could get a lot out of a pack-train 
without mistreating it. 

Ulysses La Casse, commonly called “The Frog” 


[22] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


because he was of French-Canadian parentage, was 
the all-round man of the party. Popularly credited 
with being the best camp-cook in the Canadian 
Rockies, and also quite competent as a packer and 
wrangler as well as a guide, hunter and climber, 
“Ulus” was fitted to “pinch-hit” in emergency in 
any department of the game. He was also the only 
man in the party with previous firsthand knowledge 
of the Columbia Icefield, having been to and across 
the eastern side of it the year before with the Tor- 
rington mountain-climbing expedition. 

With time hanging on our hands that evening after 
an early supper at the little hotel near the station the 
occasion seemed opportune for a preliminary try-out 
of the radio. In spite of the discouraging pro- 
nouncements of experts in Chicago, New York and 
Montreal, who had declared that the region of the 
Canadian Rockies was almost certainly a “dead” 
area, I had high hopes of what we were going to do 
with that shiny little black box o’ tricks. Nor was I 
given pause by the fact that neither myself nor any- 
one else in the party knew much more about radio 
than we did of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. 
What was the use of knowing anything about ite 
Had not our party of comparative novices of the 
Grand Canyon Survey expedition given the first 


[23] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


definite answer to the popularly and even technically 
accepted theory that radio could not be received in 
a deep sheer-walled gorge? And now we would 
confound the experts again by demonstrating that the 
eastern wall of the Rockies did not present an in- 
superable barrier to the passage of the winged eth- 
ereal wave. ‘To be sure my relations with the radio 
set carried through the Grand Canyon had been con- 
fined to stowing the stout yellow box containing it in 
the forward compartment of my boat and doing my 
best to keep it from being dumped out into a rapid. 
But I had watched to see how the ether was coaxed 
into giving up its secrets and felt quite confident that 
I could become a perfectly good coaxer myself now 
that I had a set of my own. 

All of which showed a fine resolute Crusader’s 
spirit—and not very much of anything else. The 
ears at our head-phones might have been cocked into 
the abysmal void for all the response my spirited 
jiggering of dials conjured from the unsympathetic 
ether. Some of the reasons for this became apparent 
in the morning when we took down the aerial and 
restowed the set in its pack-box. Then even my un- 
practised eye discovered something over half a dozen 
little things that were wrong, with possibly an equal 
number of similar imposers of silence overlooked. 


[24] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


A “lead” run direct to “ground” after being con- 
nected to the aerial by a hitch similar to the one 
Baptie would have used in securing a roped steer 
was one of the least of the difficulties. And that 
illustrates the kind of radio experts we were to begin 
with. 

As there was too much risk of losing more animals 
by turning the pack-horses out to forage, the whole 
bunch was tied up for the night with the only bale 
of hay procurable distributed in pitifully inadequate 
handfuls among the fourteen of them. They were 
very hungry and gaunt in the morning, for which 
reason “‘Soapy” hastened our departure in order to 
get them out to a good grass camp as early in the day 
as possible. The missing animals were replaced by 
two badly trail-worn cayuses from a pack outfit be- 
longing to Bill Potts, “Soapy’s” partner, which had 
just come in from the Yoho. Saddle-galled and 
weary, the recruits were far below the standard of 
the picked and carefully conditioned stock making 
up the rest of the outfit. 

The addition of the radio and carrier pigeons, 
with their accessories, which “Soapy” had not been 
expecting, together with a couple of extra cases of 
photographic supplies Harmon had added at the 
last minute, swelled the loads to a volume which 


[25] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


really demanded the increase of our pack-train by 
two or three head. With no further animals of the 
sturdy stock necessary for the rough work in prospect 
available at Lake Louise, “‘Soapy” philosophically 
decided to divide the extra baggage among the 
horses on hand and let Nature take her own course 
in reducing it to proper proportions. I, innocently, 
supposed that the cryptic remark had reference to 
the inroads our ravenous appetites would make upon 
the grub supply. As the sequel proved, however, 
our trail-wise old mountaineer had more in mind 
what happens to overly bulky packs in traversing a 
land of muskeg and fallen timber. 

Of all known methods of transport that by pack- 
horse or pack-mule is beyond comparison the rough- 
est and most destructive. Man-back, dog-sled, 
elephant, camel, boat, auto truck or aerial tramway 
are as nothing in their power to do harm. The 
crushing of lash-ropes and the jolting even along 
an open trail are punishing beyond description. 
When, in addition, the pack-train is headed into un- 
cut timber, dead-falls, bogs and boulders, the destruc- 
tive elements are multiplied many times over. 

Into close-growing timber as soon as we turned 
north from the railway line, the first nine miles up 
the swampy flats of the Bow River were a fitting’ 


[26] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


initiation for the stern work ahead. One of the first 
packs to be knocked under a horse’s heels by collid- 
ing with the limb of a half fallen tree originally con- 
sisted of cases of jam and baking powder, with the 
insulated wire for the radio aerial riding between. 
The tangled antenne materials were the only things 
to preserve their identity so as to be at all recogniz- 
able after the terrible mauling under new-shod 
hoofs, but the preserve-smeared and powder-dusted 
loops were still in a condition to lend point to old 
“Soapy’s’ wholly atrocious attempt at a joke. 

“Tf that geesly radio don’t ‘jam’ again when she’s 
set up,” he drawled, “this anointing ought to qualify 
her for broadcasting some right snappy baking 
receeps.”’ 

Outbreaks like that, however much deserving of 
condemnation in civilization, serve a distinct and 
important purpose during pack trouble in the wil- 
derness by offering an outlet for pent up internal 
wrath which might otherwise result in violence. 
One begins by condoning, then encouraging, and is 
lucky if he does not end by embracing the habit 
himself. 

Between mud and devious windings among dead- 
falls, our progress that first day was painfully slow. 
Now a horse was bogged to its belly; now a pack 


[27] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


jammed tight between two close-growing trees while 
its bearer struggled on through; now, with all signs 
of a trail gone, the whole train would scatter among 
the timber. We were six hours making nine miles, 
and with everyone so busy all the way finding strayed 
horses and scattered packs that the ever-heightening 
western wall of the Rockies, with its shimmering 
fingers of glacial ice clawing for precarious holds 
above the valley of the Bow, unfolded its brilliant 
panorama almost unnoticed. 

Making camp in a drizzling rain, we took stock 
of the first day’s attrition. With stoutly boxed and 
sacked stuff salvage had been almost complete. 
Most of the losses were suffered by things like the 
baking powder and dehydrated vegetables, especially 
where the packs had gone to pieces in mud or water. 
Wet baking powder was, of course, gone forever, 
but in the case of dampened dried fruit and vege- 
tables the result had been to increase volume far out 
of proportion to the actual loss. Nature had taken 
her course, to be sure, but, far from acting the way 
‘‘Soapy” anticipated, had probably increased the 
volume if not the weight of his food supplies by five 
or ten per cent. This meant that the horses would 
be packed heavier than ever for a few more days. 
But “Soapy’s” hour was yet to come. 


[28] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


Finding it no longer possible to continue up the 
half flooded flats of the Bow the following morning, 
the horses were dragged and shoved for five hun- 
dred feet up the steep eastern wall of the valley to 
where a narrow trail had been blazed many years 
before. It was a desperately hard scramble for 
over-packed animals and far from soft work for 
men. Every few feet hair-poised boulders, left by 
the slide whose wake we followed, had to be rolled 
aside to give footing for the scrambling horses. 
Turning a rock over and propping it up to prevent 
its rolling down the fifty-degree slope onto a pack- 
train strung out below is an operation that requires 
both care and judgment, to say nothing of strength. 
By keeping very much in open order and out of a 
direct line below where active road work was in 
progress, we managed to stay clear of the paths 
of the hunks of rock which went adrift and headed 
a little avalanche of their own to the valley. We 
had all too much of that same sort of mountain- 
side work in loose rock with the pack-train before 
the trip was over, but, speaking personally, I was 
never able to arouse any enthusiasm for it. With 
each one of the four floundering feet of sixteen horses 
(not to mention those of five men and two dogs) 
a potential starter of a moving mountainside, the 


[29] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


feeling engendered is far from that one of com- 
fortable placidity that comes with the reassuring 
clasp of the rope on the rim of a hundred-foot 
crevasse. 

The trail which we had laboured so hard to gain 
proved to be the almost obliterated remains of what 
had been only a wretched track at the best. It was 
blocked in many places by fallen timber, which had 
to be cut away whenever presenting too high a 
barrier for the horses to scramble across. Con- 
gratulating ourselves on the fact that the well 
drained mountainside would at least give better 
footing than the bottomless muskeg, we started 
worrying the train along through the prostrate tree 
trunks as best we could. 

We had made about a mile when an innocuous- 
looking patch of moisture where a limpid springlet 
dribbled out of the mountainside proved that our 
anticipations as to the continued solidity of footing 
were somewhat premature. La Casse, on foot, was 
out in advance of the train, leading by his halter 
a wiry little buckskin called “The Rat.” Because 
of his sure-footedness, ‘“The Rat” had been given 
the honourable and highly responsible task of carry- 
ing the pigeon box. The latter, a frail packing 
case of corrugated pasteboard, was lashed so as to 


[30] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


ride high up on top of what was already a bulky pack 
of bed rolls. We figured it was worth the trouble 
it Was giving to manceuvre clear of overhanging 
limbs to have the box in as lofty a vantage as possible 
in case “The Rat” had to swim at a ford or became 
deeply bogged. 

Now this was soundly enough reasoned out, but 
held good only so long as “The Rat” remained right 
side up. When that shifty ex-Indian cayuse found 
the trail under him suddenly resolving into a bottom- 
less patch of soft mud and tried to get out of it by 
rolling, the unfortunate pigeons were placed in just 
about the position of the Hindu fanatic who casts 
himself under the wheels of the Car of Juggernaut. 
Nothing less than the quick-witted cook’s catlike 
leap and flying tackle saved the flimsy box and con- 
tents from being rolled to a pancake under the 
weight of the floundering “Rat” and his heavy pack. 

The birds were brought free with hardly more 
than an upsetting of their water-can, but the case of 
their late bearer was more serious. ‘The Rat” had 
continued wallowing until his head was folded back 
under his body like that of an unhatched chicken. 
Then, with all four legs sticking up straight in the 
air, he gave up the fight and began resignedly to 
strangle. Rob, the wrangler, had already thrown a 


[31] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


hitch over the forelegs and started pulling down the 
trail when “Soapy,” dashing onto the scene from 
above, lassooed the hind legs and set his mount pull- 
ing in the opposite direction. It was decidedly 
rough on “The Rat” in a sense, this Spanish Inquisi- 
tion treatment, but in the end it proved his salvation. 
Pulling himself together before he was completely 
pulled apart, he kicked free from “Soapy’s” hitch 
and, turning a complete somersault, landed on his 
feet and came bounding along in the slithering wake 
of Rob. 

“The Rat” was a tough little brute, and where an 
ordinary horse could hardly have been less than 
drawn and quartered by so terrific an experience, 
he showed almost no effects of it for a while. Later 
it became evident that there must have been some 
injury to his back, for he was never able to raise 
his rear hoofs more than a foot from the ground 
when trying to kick. Yet even this trouble, what- 
ever it was, never affected his usefulness as a pack- 
horse. He continued to bear the heaviest of loads 
even through the deep snows of the last weeks of the 
trip. 

Tall, slender extremely dense timber screened all 
but evanescent glimpses of a grey-green sheet of 
water widening across the valley floor below. ‘This 


[32] 





Photo by L. R. Freeman 


FLASHLIGHT OF TEPEE AT NIGHT 





AM Te 








Photo by L. R. Freeman 
SHOEING A REFRACTORY HORSE 





BUMPING UP THE BOW 


was Hector Lake, named for the physician and 
surgeon with the Palliser expedition, which made 
the first scientific exploration of the passes of the 
Canadian Rockies in 1858. It is fed by a stream 
from the Hector Glacier, which extends down 
from the summit of the Waputik Mountains, as the 
main chain of the Rockies is called in this region. 
It drains to the Bow, which, at high waters, covers 
the low level valley flats to the south and east with 
a lake of its own. 

Passing out of the heavy timber, a half mile among 
the chaos of piled rocks and up-ended tree trunks 
where the snow slides of a thousand centuries had 
left their accumulated scourings at the foot of the 
mountain, we crossed the boulder-choked channel of 
Mosquito Creek and descended again to the flats 
of the Bow. In spite of several fordings of the 
deep, swift river, the going here was the best 
we had enjoyed since leaving Lake Louise. This 
was due principally to the fact that, with the valley 
floor sloping at a sharper declivity, more water had 
been drained out of the clinging blue-grey glacial 
silt with which it was paved. 

First and last, glacial silt was the most annoying 
scourge we encountered on the whole journey. 
This main by-product of the grinding of the mills 


[33] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


of the ice makes the muddiest mud, as well as the 
dustiest dust, with which I have ever had personal 
contact. Like the Mills of the Gods in the poem, 
those of the glaciers, though they grind but slowly, 
‘yet they grind exceedingly small.” The dust is so 
impalpable that it will filter through the closest 
woven canvas; the mud, at its worst, offers no resis- 
tance whatever to the downward passage of the foot 
or the body of horse or man. Once into it, one 
goes right on to bedrock, unless he has help, or is so 
fortunate as to encounter some extraneous body like 
the trunk of a tree. 

Our packers claimed that glacial silt had one 
use. It was a wonderful abrasive—had no equal, 
in fact, for putting on strops for sharpening razors. 
Not having shaved during the trip, I had no chance 
to test the pestilential paste on razors. As to its 
abrasive effect on tempers, however, I can testify 
from a full heart. 

Following the winding ribbon of the Bow until 
mountain meadows, gay with flowers, gave place to 
the narrow and precipitous canyon which drains 
the lake above, we were finally forced to ascend a 
series of sloping benches to the north for another 
miserable stage in bogs and fallen timber. Climb- 
ing slowly but steadily, we skirted the attenuated 


[34] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


finger of the lower lake, passed the swift-flowing 
narrows above, and came out at the end of the 
afternoon upon the firm pebble-paved beach loop- 
ing in the easterly arm of the upper or main Bow 
Lake. 

The scene, especially as it burst upon us after 
the terribly wearing struggle with an all but ex- 
hausted pack-train in the black inferno of burned 
timber and mud-holes below, was of an unearthly 
loveliness. To our left was the weird Crowsfoot 
Glacier, clutching with icy talons the precipitous 
slopes of towering Bow Peak to keep from falling 
into the foam-white rapids of the narrows below. 
To our right, a long gently sloping wedge of meadow, 
dark green and brown and mottled with the shadows 
of low-lying bushes and clumps of snow-stunted 
pines, led up to the broad notch of Bow Pass, 
through which could be seen the pinnacles of the 
snowy peaks across the Saskatchewan floating, sun- 
sharpened, against the blue haze beyond. Ahead, 
across a milky-jade lake surface gently ruffled by 
the evening breeze, was a wall of ice and rock cul- 
minating in the solid mass of Bow Glacier, which 
reared its bottle-green snout above a grey boulder- 
fan streaked with glittering runlets of tumbling 
water. 


[35] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Two great waterfalls, flanking the face of the 
glacier to left and right, showed perpendicular 
shafts of gleaming white, round and solid, like the 
marble pillars supporting the arch of a Grecian 
temple. The slanting afternoon sunlight formed 
concentric circles of rainbows in the mist-whorls 
rising from the foot of the twin cataracts, before 
striking through to prick with opalescent gleams 
the dancing wavelets of the lake below. 

It was a pity that the day’s travel could not have 
been brought to an end then and there, for taking 
to the mud and the timber again was a sad anti- 
climax after the sudden unfolding of that inspiring 
vision. But a camp site in the northern Rockies 
demands not only a fairly level and comparatively 
dry place for the tents, but also good grazing for 
the horses within reasonable distance. With none 
of these essentials available where we were, there 
was nothing to do but push on until they were found. 
The fact that we had already been eight hours on 
the road, where four or five was all a pack-train 
ought to be required to endure of such travel, had 
nothing to do with the situation. 

The mountain side sloping to the east end of the 
lake proved to be honey-combed with bubbling 
springs, clear and beautiful to look upon but po- 


[36] 


BUMPING UP THE BOW 


tential morasses for the weary horses. At the end 
of a quarter of a mile, with half of the animals down 
and all of them near the end of their strength, we 
gave up the fight with the mud and dragged them, 
one at a time, down to the lake. There was no 
beach for the next mile, but with the bottom solid 
and the water not over ten to twenty inches deep, 
it was possible to make slow but steady progress. 

Splashing and floundering along over slippery 
rocks, the leaking mountain side was skirted, only 
to find the lake bottom becoming soft and soggy 
where the little valley ran back to the summit of 
Bow Pass. What had looked like a pretty meadow 
a mile away turned out to be brushy muskeg, with 
a narrow steep-banked stream winding back and 
forth across it like the wake of a wounded snake. 

With several of the horses ready to quit every 
time they bogged down, we were nearly an hour 
wallowing our way across the last half mile. That 
behind us, we pushed through a forest of fine old 
spruce to a protected and beautiful camp-site a 
couple of hundred yards back from the north side 
of the lake, with Bow Glacier, rosy pink in the sun- 
set glow, reared against the southwestern skyline. 

Rain in the night, turning to snow for an hour 
or two after dawn, was followed by a day too lower- 


[37] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


ing and overcast to make work in the picture line 
practicable. Snow on the 20th of August was a 
significant reminder of how near winter stalks in 
the northern Rockies, even in midsummer. String- 
ing the radio in the afternoon, with the aerial be- 
tween two lofty pines, we were awarded by vigorous 
wails from the ether which gave promise of better 
things once there was time to make a careful set-up. 
We had learned enough to reassure us on two im- 
portant points: that this section of the Rockies was 
not in any sense a “dead” area, and that the terrific 
banging it had received had not seriously impaired 
the usefulness of our little receiving set. 

Quite our most interesting radio reception of the 
day, however, had nothing to do with etheral mes- 
sages. It came about through the fact that, during 
the forenoon, salt had been thrown for the horses 
on the identical patch of grass where the radio 
Was set up later in the day. Twice or thrice in 
the course of the afternoon a bunch of the horses — 
straggled down from the meadow above for another 
grateful lick of salinity. The last time they were 
accompanied by two splendid whitetail does, the 
first deer we had seen. 

Taking our cameras and backing off unobtrusively 
into the timber, Harmon and I left the salt-lick, 


[38] 


aSYOH MOVd ONINWIMS V ONIGM (,aaLsnd,, 
fuvg “uowmspy uorkg fo tsajzsnoyd 


a MARTE S RES Aan Re Oe conte ge Danie: aenta | 





OIdVY AHL LOAdSNI OL NOISVOOO AHL JO FDVLNVAGY MOOL 
‘dWVO MO OLNI SASYOH AHL ONIMOTION “WAAC V 


UuDWUWaary “sy “TJ GQ 004g 





BUMPING UP THE BOW 


and incidentally the radio, to our graceful lady 
visitors. The strange-looking and smelling box 
seemed to have a greater appeal to the curiosity 
of the pretty pair than did the salt to their palates. 
Once fully aware of it, they stopped licking for a 
while and confined their activities to stepping round 
and round the wonder in narrowing circles. 

By the time we had slipped and slid along into a 
position suitable for pictures, one of them had satis- 
fied her curiosity and gone back to munching the 
salty grass. The other, when I snapped at a hun- 
dred feet, was standing with extended neck, her sen- 
sitive nose sniffing not many inches away from the 
dials. Stalking still closer, I was about to snap 
again when a snort, ripped out at the edge of the 
timber, sent both of our afternoon-salt guests bound- 
ing away. ‘Their lord and master, evidently becom- 
ing suspicious over developments, had ordered his 
ladies home. 

Notwithstanding the character of the offering 
which first attracted our visitors, my photograph 
will attest that this story need not be taken cum grano 


salts, 


[39] 


CHAPTER III 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


ANOTHER night with snow flurries gave way to a 
day of ideal mountain photographic weather—sun- 
shine and squalls with their butterfly chases of lights 
and shadows. As this marked the beginning of our 
work with the cameras, a few words about the mak- 
ing of scenics may be in order before going on with 
the story of the expedition. 

With the veriest tyro of a movie fan sapient of all 
the tricks and intricacies of photo-play production, 
from the simplest of double exposures to the me- 
chanics of the opening up of the Red Sea to engulf 
the armies of Pharaoh, there is still very little knowl- 
edge of the “inside” work of shooting scenics. 

The generally accepted idea appears to be that a 
scenic moving-picture is made by simply going out 
and travelling among beautiful mountains and lakes 
and rivers and exposing film on the best of them as 
the camera-man goes along. This primitive idea of 
the genesis of the scenic I found held even by a dis- 
tinguished engineer who had described to me in de- 
tail how Notre Dame cathedral in the “Hunchback” 


[40] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


had been shot in a combination of solid sets and 
paintings on glass. The fact that an effective scenic 
shot might cost more time and trouble than the con- 
struction of a photo-play Babylon or Paris had never 
entered his head. 

The reason that the public has pushed behind the 
scenes in the case of the photo-play without ever sus- 
pecting that there was any “‘behind” to the scenic is 
doubtless due to the fact that it knows that the former 
is the result of an attempt to create an illusion, while 
the latter is merely an attempt to hold a mirror up 
to Nature. This view is correct in the main, but 
what the general public appears never to have sufh- 
ciently understood is the fact that, in many instances, 
holding the mirror up to Nature may require quite 
as much preparation and trouble as the creation of 
an illusion. Nature cannot be coerced nor even 
cajoled; she can only be humoured and waited upon. 
It is successful humouring and waiting that makes 
for the successful scenic. 

As a by no means extreme example of what wait- 
ing on Nature may involve, I might mention the 
work, time and privation incident to getting a mov- 
ing picture of Mount Columbia some weeks later 
on the expedition on which we were now embarked. 
Knowing that this most beautiful pinnacle had never 


[41] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


been photographed from the north even by ordinary 
cameras, we planned a deviation from our original 
itinerary that would take us to the head of the 
Athabaska, which drains toward the Arctic from the 
Columbia peak and icefield. This called for a 
hundred miles of travel up and down flooded valleys 
and over glaciers and passes, where four or five miles 
a day was good progress and where there was con- 
stant risk of losing horses and packs in swimming 
swollen rivers. 

Reaching timber-line at the head of the Athabaska 
with exhausted horses, we were assailed by a series 
of storms which completely shut out the mountain 
from view for eight consecutive days. At the end 
of that time, with the horses all but starved from 
lack of grass and our own provisions reduced almost 
to the vanishing point, we were rewarded by half an 
hour of slanting afternoon sunshine which set off 
the splendid peak with such a lighting as it may not 
have had for years. We were on reduced rations 
for a week as a consequence of that vigil, and some 
of the horses never did regain their full strength; 
but we got our pictures, both stills and movies. 

The photographer on the “lot” has always in his 
favour the fact that he is working with sets built 
for no other purpose than to shoot most effectively 


[42] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


under ideal lighting conditions. The scenic pho- 
tographer has to take Nature as he finds her, and it 
is undeniable that some of the most beautiful natural 
manifestations have not good “screen faces.” There 
are features like the Yosemite, Kaiteur Falls and the 
Matterhorn which, in the picturesque parlance of 
the camera-man, “shoot like a million dollars.” 
With a composition as perfect as that of a built-to- 
order studio miniature, the photographer has only to 
wait for the clouds and sunshine which will give the 
light and shadows to register moods. 

There are other great natural wonders, like the 
Grand Canyon of the Colorado or the Yguazu Falls, 
which are always disappointing in the pictures, 
especially to those who have seen them as they are. 
They make interesting views, but—principally be- 
cause they can be pictured only in bits—fail to put 
their personalities onto the screen. 

The magnificent Fall of the Athabaska is a case 
in point from our present trip. This beautiful 
cataract, falling from an open valley into a deep 
gorge, is bathed in so unequal a light that one part 
of its shimmering shaft of leaping water cannot be 
photographed properly without greatly over- or 
under-exposing all the rest. ‘This condition prevails 
at low and middle stages of water. At flood stage 


[43] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


the great horseshoe of tumbling white is completely 
obscured by the heavy mists floating up from the 
surges in the rocky gorge below. 

Save for the occasional bursting of a dam or the 
breaking of the waves of a storm against a sea-wall, 
Nature’s greatest action pictures are rarely caught 
by the camera. The eruption of a volcano is occa- 
sionally filmed, but only from a safe distance. Erup- 
tion, earthquake and cyclone pictures are usually 
pictured only in the aftermaths of disaster. ‘This js 
also true of cloudbursts. The man on the spot sel- 
dom has a camera of any kind, especially one for 
taking motion pictures. Or if he has, the light or 
his vantage may be wrong. A still picture which I 
took from a very favourable position of a tremendous 
cloudburst pouring over a castellated pinnacle above 
the Grand Canyon of the Colorado came out on the 
film no more savage than a summer sunset. 

I have never heard of a good picture of a major 
avalanche, though a camera-man who accompanied 
me to the head waters of the Columbia in the Selkirks 
of Canada missed by a hair the chance of a lifetime 
to make such a shot. Or perhaps I should say that 
he missed it by an echo, for that was what was really 
at the bottom of the heart-breaking failure. This 
occurred at the Lake of the Hanging Glacier, 


[44] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


whither we had journeyed by pack-train to make the 
preliminary shots for the filming of a boat trip from 
the source to the mouth of the Columbia on which 
I was about to embark. 

The setting for a movie was incomparable. The 
“Hanging Glacier,” a mile wide across its face, 
closed the farther end of the lake with a two- 
hundred-foot wall of solid ice. Back of this was an 
ice-sheathed cliff two thousand feet or more in 
height, crowned by a snow-cap, white and smooth as 
a marble dome, sparkling against a sky of deep azure. 
The lake itself was a glittering emerald nestling 
in a setting of glaciers and ancient snows, with its 
glassy surface reflecting the bizarre shapes of float- 
ing icebergs and the reversed images of towering 
walls. 

In an endeavour to get some life and action into 
the movie shots we were trying to set some of the 
floating icebergs in motion by exploding sticks of 
dynamite under them. It was this that was re- 
sponsible for creating what I am inclined to believe 
was the greatest opportunity ever presented to a 
moving-picture operator to film one of the most 
stupendous of Nature’s manifestations. 

The brink of the great ice-cap must have been all 
but ready to fall by its own weight. The shock of 


[45] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


the detonating dynamite provided just the sort of 
jar that was necessary to start it ahead of Nature’s 
schedule. The whole far end of the lake suddenly 
seemed to be falling in. The tumbling cap formed 
an unbroken cataract of glittering ice and snow—a 
mile wide and half a mile high—right down to the 
level of the glacier. And the jar of this avalanche 
set the glacier itself vibrating, so that all of the lake- 
ward wall of it cracked off and fell into the water to 
form a fresh phalanx of wallowing icebergs. 

A strange trick of alpine acoustics was responsible 
for the fact that this tremendous picture was not per- 
petuated upon celluloid. The camera-man, with his 
instrument already set up to catch the bobbing of the 
imminent bergs as the dynamite awakened them to 
life, would have needed but a few seconds to swing 
round his long-focus lens and train it upon the 
great slide. Unfortunately, those precious moments 
were lost trying to locate the disturbance on the side 
of the valley from which its thunderous echo car- 
omed down to the berg-battered beach upon which 
the camera was set up. By the time snow-glare- 
blinded eyes were squinting in the direction of the 
real avalanche the show was over and the opportun- 
ity of a lifetime gone. Only a few thin trickles of 
snow were streaking the face of the cliffs when he 


[46] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


finally swung his powerful telephoto upon them, 
and even these had ceased before he had found a 
focus. 

It was no end of a pity. I was present when some 
of the largest valangas of recent years were started 
in the Dolomites by the Italian artillery during the 
late war. Yet not all of these combined would have 
equalled a tithe of the weight and volume of the 
titanic avalanche of ice and snow set in motion by 
our innocent stick of dynamite at the Lake of the 
Hanging Glacier. 

And this illustrates another salient difference be- 
tween photo-play and certain kinds of scenic photog- 
raphy. On the “lot,” or even on location, if a scene 
is not shot to the liking of a director, he simply roars 
his classic “Rotten! Do it again!” and the whole 
action is repeated. ‘This can be, and often is, gone 
over a dozen times if necessary. 

But Nature cannot be handled in this summary 
fashion. Fixed and immutable things, of course, 
like mountain and waterfalls, stay right where they 
are, to be shot again and again as long as the light 
holds good. But slides that have slid are gone for- 
ever, and so, also, may be lost the sunset of a thou- 
sand that has to be passed up because the horse with 
the movie camera is down in the mud. 


[47] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Nor can a sheer-walled rapid, like so many I have 
run for a movie in the Grand Canyon of the Colo- 
rado and the Columbia, be shot again because the 
camera balks during the first attempt. Nor yet is it 
often practicable to risk horses and packs a second 
time in a dangerous river ford. In all trail and 
river pictures of this kind there is no “come back.” 

The failure of the first shot means the loss of the 
scene and possibly a break in the continuity of the 
scenic. 

The first scenics were no more than a series of dis- 
connected movie shots, screened about as one would 
turn the pages of a kodak album. These were fol- 
lowed by the so-called “travelogue” type, with a man 
walking through the pictures and pointing out the 
various objects of interest after the fashion of an 
animated Baedeker. This was an improvement, but 
the floor-walker manners of the cicerone often made 
the showing singularly reminiscent of “our Mr. 
Cohn” taking visitors over the newly opened wing 
of a department store. 

If there ever has been found a man who can 
“demonstrate” the panorama from a mountain-top 
without going through the wooden poses of an 
Indian cigar sign I have yet to see him on the screen. 
A world of snow and ice towering above a stream- 


[48] 


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Ladi auYOS SIH AAVS OL HOVd V ONIGIY «AALS |g,, 
Sung ‘uowsvyT uostg fo saqanoy 





BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


streaked valley is on a bit too vast a scale to be shown 
off like a real estate subdivision or a stack of Persian 
rugs. 

A few odds and ends of outdoor views (not inaptly 
called “screenics”) are still occasionally shown by 
the old bargain-counter method and to the accompan- 
iment of the wooden “‘ain’t that an eyeful” gesture. 
But the present-day maker of scenics has adopted the 
simpler, more intimate and less undignified plan of 
making the person who sees the picture screened a 
sort of silent partner in the expedition. This system 
is at its best where the scenic contemplates covering 
a barely explored region such as the one into which 
our present expedition was about to penetrate—a 
land which the public knows little or nothing about. 

A map, with a few words of history and topog- 
raphy, may be screened as an introduction; then the 
departure, followed by connected and carefully cor- 
related shots which tell the complete story of the 
expedition from start to finish. The outstanding 
scenic views will always be the main thing, but these 
will be linked by a series of shots showing the trou- 
bles, and perhaps the tragedies of the trail, the rou- 
tine and humours of camp life, with something also 
of the problems of transport and their solving. 

Five or six reels of a scenic intelligently made 


[49] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


along these lines should give one seeing it screened a 
clearer idea of a region of which he may never have 
previously heard than many weeks poring over books 
covering the identical section. The work and wor- 
ries, the thrills and griefs, of trying to introduce life, 
action and a human touch into such a modern scenic 
will unfold with the story of our expedition to “The 
Mother of Rivers.” 

The physical problems of the moving-picture ex- 
pedition going into rough and rarely traversed coun- 
try are very akin to those of the surveying party. 
Both may have to operate in regions of flooded val- 
leys and snowy passes, or in dense tropical jungles, 
or in trackless, waterless deserts; both may be able 
to reach their objectives only by the crossing of bro- 
ken icefields, or pushing in boats down hitherto un- 
run rapids. And besides the transport of food and 
clothing, each has to carry and protect delicate 
instruments, the loss of or injury to which would 
defeat the principal end of their expeditions. 

In this latter respect the film man has by far the 
more difficult problem. All of the standard motion- 
picture cameras are so much heavier than the transit, 
alidad or other instruments of the surveyor that the 
difficulty of protecting them is increased many fold. 
The best that can be done in other instances is to 


[50] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


provide strong, padded water-tight cases, and, wher- 
ever possible, to have these containers transported by 
hand at the points of greatest menace—bad rapids if 
travelling by river, broken slides of rock and fallen 
timber, if moving by pack-train. 

A motion-picture camera is as delicate as a watch 
and several hundred times as heavy. Carefully 
cased, it will survive all ordinary hazards of wilder- 
ness travel short of the rolling of a horse down a 
precipice or the smashing of a boatina rapid. Once 
out of its protective boxings, however, as it is at all 
times when about to be used, a fall of over a foot or 
two to anything save soft earth or snow will almost 
certainly wreak injury beyond all but factory repair. 

A springing of the metal frame too slight to be 
detected by the eye, or the least disalignment of the 
intricate cogs, may cause a jamming of the film that 
will ruin shot after shot. Extraordinary care at all 
times in carrying the camera is the best that can be 
done to save it, and it is astonishing the amount of 
difficult and even dangerous climbing that can be 
done with the heavy, cumbersome instrument with- 
out enough of a misstep to result in its permanent 
injury. Equally remarkable, on the other hand, is 
the way a movie camera will become obstreperous 
for no apparent reason at all save pure cussedness. 


[st] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Trouble of this kind almost invariably occurs at the 
beginning of an important shot—only too often, in- 
deed, one which there is no chance to make over 
again. 

A motion-picture camera can occasionally be 
coaxed into working order again following a com- 
plete and even a prolonged submergence in water or 
mud, but only in the event its operator is fully com- 
petent to take it apart and put it together again. 
If the tiniest grain of sand or the infinitesimal part of 
a drop of water are left after the cleaning trouble is 
certain to follow. Even the lenses have to be taken 
apart and thoroughly dried to get rid of possible 
moisture which will later form a blurring fog. 

Extremes of heat and cold are among the most 
difficult things with which the maker of scenics has 
to contend. In our boat voyage of 1923 through the 
Grand Canyon of the Colorado, for instance, tem- 
peratures running as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit 
so softened the film that it was impossible at times 
to reload it without injuring the emulsion. On the 
present trip, on the other hand, there were mornings 
when the mercury dropped down to 20 degrees below 
Zero. 

The delicate adjustments of the lenses could not 
be made with mittened fingers, yet the ordeal of 


[52] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


touching chilled metal which seared the skin like ~ 
contact with a hot stove was really one of the least 
of Harmon’s many troubles. His worst difficulty 
was that of preventing the fogging of his many lenses 
and filters. A camera brought from a fire-warmed 
tepee on a zero morning would always condense 
moisture which could only be completely removed 
when temperatures of the metals and glasses were 
reduced to that of the air. This trouble was min- 
imized by leaving all of our cameras, carefully cov- 
ered, out of doors during the night, but the difficulties 
which arose from the fogging of lenses from our own 
breaths was always with us on cold days. I fogged 
a filter on Castleguard (and incidentally spoiled an 
important picture) with the moisture from the same 
breath with which I was warning Harmon to keep 
his own frosted exhalations off his six-inch telephoto. 

The presence of abnormal amounts of static elec- 
tricity in the air of high mountain and desert regions 
is responsible for quite as much trouble to the 
moving-picture man as to the operator of a radio. 
The friction of the film on metal creates brilliantly 
flashing sparks which are registered on the negative 
in a form strikingly suggestive of the miniature bolts 
of lightning which they really are. A specially- 
coated anti-static film reduces the risk from this 


[53] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


source materially, as does also the practice of mini- — 
mizing friction by placing small strips of felt at all 
points where the celluloid strip passes over metal. 
In spite of all precautions, however, these bolts from 
the hand of a baby Jove are likely to descend at any 
moment to jazz their forkéd trail across an otherwise 
perfectly exposed strip of film. 

The physical difficulties of transporting and pro- 
tecting his outfit and of making technically perfect 
film, overcome as far as possible, the maker of a 
scenic can turn his attention to the picture itself. 
Where the shooting of a motionless subject, such as 
a mountain peak, a cliff or a valley, is concerned, 
one might think that the thing could be done quite 
as satisfactorily with a still as with a movie camera. 
This is, indeed, quite true if the peak alone is con- 
sidered. A stereopticon slide would show it off just 
as effectively as would a strip of running film, and 
without the flicker. But it is in its ability to intro- 
duce life and action into the picture that the movie 
has the advantage. 

The “slow-cranking” of the clouds blown across 
the half-revealed summit of a snow-capped peak 
makes it possible for the movement to be greatly ac- 
celerated by running the film through the projector 
at the normal rate on the screen showing, producing 


[54] 














Photo by L. R. Freeman 


CASTLEGUARD FALLS 






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Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 


WRITING UP RADIO NOTES AT BOW LAKE CAMP 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


the effect of a breaking storm so often resorted to in 
photo-play shots. Waving trees, nodding reeds at 
the border of a wind-rippled lake, or a flowing 
stream add immeasurably to the effect of the snowy 
peak towering in the background in majestic immo- 
bility. Finally, there is the use of human figures 
in the foreground. 

I have mentioned the way in which many scenics 
are marred by the wooden posturings of “demon- 
strators” who give the impression of trying to auction 
the screened landscape at so much a yard. Unless 
a man can stand out on a rock and look at a mountain 
or valley in more or less the same way he would if 
he knew there was no clicking movie camera within 
a thousand miles, he had much better be kept out 
Seine pictute entirely. “Learnin’ ‘em to act 
nateral” is one of the most baffling problems con- 
fronting the scenic director. 

Admonishing a packer or a boatman just to “be 
natural” is giving a “‘counsel of perfection” no more 
practical to follow than Jerome K. Jerome’s direc- 
tion to the young man who would be a success in 
society. It is no less difficult to be natural to order 
before a cranking camera than it would be to “adopt 
an easy and pleasing manner, especially toward 
ladies,” as the British humourist suggested. 


[55] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


If it is simply an ordinary routine trail or camp 
shot, such as unpacking the horses or pitching the 
tepee, it is usually enough to get the background and 
the lightings right and tell the men to “Make it 
snappy!” The accelerated action concentrates their 
minds on the work in hand and keeps it off the dis- 
concerting glare of the one-eyed box. But taking 
them out on a skyline cliff, between the Devil of the 
camera and the Deep Sea of Nature, and keeping 
them still the simple, unaffected children of the 
wild is quite another matter. Self-consciousness su- 
pervenes instantly on a solemn occasion of that kind, 
and unless this is exorcized one’s lithe, graceful, pic- 
turesque woodsmen become straightaway wooden 
cigar-signs. 

The obvious remedy, of course, is to make them 
forget themselves, and to this end I have found noth- 
ing more effective than a run of inconsequential 
chatter directed from anywhere behind the field of 
the lens. Almost any kind of patter that comes into 
the head will do as a rule, but funny stories—espe- 
cially those of a subtle character—are best avoided. 
If the men get the point they are likely to be so 
tickled over it, and incidentally their own cleverness, 
as to laugh right out of their parts. If they miss the 
point, on the other hand, they are certain to become 


[56] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


even more wooden than if Nature had been allowed 
to take her course. 

A story which proved a boomerang and broke me 
for good and all of the narrative plan of off-stage 
recitative to make the units of my human fore- 
ground forget themselves and ‘‘act nateral,” was told 
on a peak of the Selkirks in making the preliminary 
shots for my voyage down the Columbia. Ninety 
feet of a wonderful sunset across a purple-shadowed 
valley had been cranked, with but ten left to go, 
when my story came to an end. Instantly the look 
of “rapt admiration” on the face of my head-packer 
and leading man was replaced by a broadening grin 
as the point drove home and began to tickle his risi- 
bilities. ‘The grin gave way to a chuckle, and that 
to a thunderous guffaw and the announcement that 
the yarn reminded “of the dance-hall gal down in 
Revelstoke that had one of them fluffy white pups 
allus wore under the arm.’”’ Of course he stepped 
right out of his part of “‘scenery-awed woodsman”’ 
right then and there to tell what “Wild Bill of the 
Big Bend of the Columbia” did to that “gol dern 
pup”—and of course the whole shot had to be made 
over in a fading light. 

There is no end of the things that can turn up to 
throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery of a 


[57] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


perfectly-oiled and smoothly running scenic shot. 
On one occasion on our present trip it was a big bull 
moose; on another it was a small dead mouse. The 
moose, lumbering down from a slide on the mountain- 
side, stampeded a part of the pack-train that was 
being bunched for a shot up the Athabaska River 
with Mount Columbia in the distance. The sad part 
of it was that, besides frightening the horses out of 
the picture, the moose—a magnificent specimen with 
an especially fine head—swerved off into the timber 
just before getting inside the focus himself. 

The intervention of the mouse was even more se- 
rious, but that story I will tell in its proper sequence. 

The handling of a series of scenic shots where it is 
desirable to introduce a touch of educational interest 
is well illustrated by the manner in which we filmed 
the panorama from the summit of Mount Castle- 
guard, overlooking the great Columbia Icefield. 
This is not only one of the most beautiful mountain 
views in the world, but also one of the most interest- 
ing. Besides looking out on a veritable sea of lofty 
peaks notching the skyline to a distance of over a 
hundred miles in every direction, one may fix his eye 
upon almost the exact point in the middle of the 
hundred and fifty square miles of the great mer de 
glace where the drainage to three major oceans di- 


[58] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


vides. As I have stated in an earlier chapter, this 
is the only place on the face of the earth where three 
great rivers, each flowing to a distinct and separate 
sea, head at one topographical apex. Our problem 
here was to give as graphic portrayal as possible 
upon the film of this unique geographic phenomenon. 

First, in order to make the most of the scenic 
effects, a complete three hundred and sixty-degree 
panorama was shot, using the lenses and filters best 
calculated to bring out the lights and shadows of the 
surrounding world of ice and snow. ‘Three of the 
packers who had made the ascent with us were then 
grouped in the foreground of a shot directed toward 
a point where a break in the western rim of the ice- 
field indicated the gorge where the Bush River 
drained to the Columbia. 

In a similar way the rifts draining to the Athabaska 
and Saskatchewan were shot in turn, the men in each 
instance looking toward the focus of interest and 
gesturing in a way intended to indicate that they were 
talking and thinking of the remarkable three-way 
dispersion of the meltage from the great icefield. 
This made place for titles telling how the waters of 
the western drainage ultimately flowed to the Pacific, 
those of the northern to the Arctic and those of the 
eastern and southern slopes to Hudson’s Bay and the 


[59] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Atlantic. It also gave opportunity for subsequent 
cut-ins of bits of scenes from the three great rivers 
and oceans, showing the mental pictures conjured up 
in the minds of the men as they looked down on the 
rounded hump of ice and snow forming the strange 
and wonderful continental apex. 

Shots of a humorous character occasionally go 
very well in camp scenes but are usually calculated 
to detract from the dignity of a great mountain, val- 
ley or other natural setting. We made an exception 
to our rule of not making shots of this kind, however, 
when one of the packers, twirling his rope and leap- 
ing through the loop of it on the brink of a three- 
thousand-foot cliff, offered an opening for some such 
title as “The Highest Jump on Record” that was too 
strong to resist. » 

Little shots of this kind, as long as they stop short 
of horse-play and comedy slap-stick stuff, are fre- 
quently desirable by way of relieving the tension 
that is likely to be strung to the breaking point by too 
long a footage of straight unadulterated “Ain’t Na- 
ture grandp” scenes. 

Camp-shots, because they can be made on days 
when the light is unfavourable for photographing 
landscape, offer few difficulties save on the score of 
variety. Packing, setting up tents, tossing flapjacks 


[60] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


and similar routine work have been done to a finish; 
also camp-fire shots by flare-light. J myself, on my 
Columbia River trip, introduced the only drastic 
variation ever filmed in a camp-fire scene when I 
walked into the picture and sat down on a smoulder- 
ing log instead of the roll of blankets which had been 
placed for me. And even the fine frenzy of that 
highly unconventional action was ruined for the 
screen when my flying leap for the river carried 
some very expressive and unpremeditated panto- 
mime out of camera range. 

Pies and cakes, produced as by the wave of a 
magic wand from an ash-covered Dutch oven, are 
“sure-fire” stuff in camp shots; also such little touches 
as candles improvised from twisted strips of bacon 
decorating a birthday cake. 

Some lively action shots are always provided by a 
bucking pack-horse, provided you are so fortunate 
as to have one in the outfit. Ornery animals that 
have to be thrown before shoeing also make for hectic 
action. ‘The best potential action shots on the trail 
—on the occasions when the real grief occurs—are 
not often made. A horse with its head doubled up 
under its back in the mud and in imminent danger 
of breaking its neck, almost invariably demands the 
instant help of all hands including the camera-man; 


[61] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


likewise an animal with a valuable pack about to be 
sucked under a log-jam by a twenty-mile current or 
down between rolling boulders at a rocky ford. It 
is also practically de rigeur in scenic trail etiquette 
to throw a rope or extend an alpenstock to a man 
down a crevasse before starting to crank film on his 
predicament. As, in actual practice, it is usually the 
preoccupied and temperamental camera-man him- 
self who drops into the hole in the ice, this nice 
discrimination is not often demanded. 

Dogs are frequently very effective in trail and 
camp shots, but unless highly intelligent are likely to 
make a deal more trouble than they are worth. We 
had one dog on the present trip—a collie-husky cross- 
breed—which performed brilliantly in riding packs 
across swollen streams, registering the whole gamut 
of canine emotions with the radio head-phones over 
his ears, and even dragging the receiving set itself 
part of the way across the glacier on an improvised 
sledge to save the delicate instrument from the almost 
annihilative rigours of pack-train transport. 

“Buster” was the motif for several hundred feet of 
live, snappy film, or just about the same footage that 
was completely ruined by his mate, an Indian-bred 
mongrel which had a special penchant for licking 
lenses and capering figure “8’s” between the legs of 


[62] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


men planted in the foreground of a scenic shot to 
register “rapt admiration” or “awed wonder.” No 
man, least of all a packer with his high spirit and 
prima donna temperament, is capable of registering 
“awed wonder” while teetering to regain a dog- 
destroyed balance on the edge of a thousand-foot 
cliff and swearing in cataclysmic Cree and English 
at the cause of his troubles. 

Cataracts and rapids have enough action of their 
own for a movie, but, unless one is striving to perpet- 
uate a mirror effect, the surface of a lake shoots 
better when stirred by a breeze. Inasmuch as a 
wind-machine is not among the “props” that can be 
carried by pack-train or boat, one usually has to wait 
until Nature is in a propitious mood if it is a breeze- 
rippled lake that is the destderatum of the moment. 
Effective agitation, though hardly similar to that of 
wind action, can, however, be obtained in various 
ways. 

One may, for instance, take a leaf out of the book 
of Xerxes, who gave the Aegean (or was it the Bos- 
porus?) a good beating with whips because it had 
engulfed some of his transports. Lashing a lake 
surface with the limbs of trees—the actual lashing 
beyond camera range, of course—will throw up a 
very merry little dance of ripples to brighten a back- 


[63] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


lighting effect or set nodding a lacustrine fringe of 
reeds. If more violent artificial action is demanded 
there remains dynamite, which is easy to transport 
and safe enough to handle if reasonable care is ex- 
ercised. Besides the accidental starting of a whole 
mountain-side sliding, as I have already described, 
we produced one very effective close-at-hand av- 
alanche by the use of dynamite on my Columbia 
expedition. ‘The details of this stirring episode have 
been told elsewhere.’ 

Wild animal photography, both still and movie, is 
in a,Class of its own, though a few shots of game in 
its native haunts cuts into a scenic very effectively. 
It demands patience and nerve on the part of the 
operator, both in large measure. As in hunting, suc- 
cess depends very largely upon luck. Indefatigable 
climbing is the main thing in shooting goat or sheep, 
either with gun or camera. In the case of the latter, 
however, many a heart-breaking clamber is stripped 
of reward by impossible light or backgrounds. 
Deer, elk, moose and caribou require interminable 
stalking, and sometimes driving, to get them in effec- 
tive pictorial surroundings. 

Bear are usually not hard to mancuvre into a po- 
sition for a movie shot, nor, ordinarily, is there more 


1 See “Down the Columbia.” 


[64.] 


ANIT AMS NO UAIOVID MOM HLIM dWVO ANVT MOa 
fuvg ‘uomsvy uoskg fo fsazsno) 





aNVT MOF 
uUuDnumaad.t “WY “J €q o,0Yg 


i secon 





BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


than a negligible element of danger in it. A she- 
bear with cubs, however, albeit quite the finest subject 
conceivable, is a creature of uncertain temper and 
had best be kept at a distance or covered with a 
rifle. How we made some highly successful movies 
of a very pugnacious old lady bear and her two cubs 
by shooting them across an impassable gorge with a 
telephoto lense I will tell in a later chapter. 

I have seen a Nepalese tiger, charging a cranking 
camera-man, stopped by a covering rifle; also a 
movie of a very similar occurrence with an African 
rhino. ‘The one onslaught which I have seen that 
nothing could stop, and which came within a hair of 
blotting out the life of the photographer who stood 
his ground by his camera, was that of a mountain 
goat. That the goat had been dead for twenty-four 
hours, and was frozen stiff as well, did not make the 
affair a whit less serious. ‘The incident occurred in 
the Selkirks, in 1920, and the camera-man was Byron 
Harmon, my associate of the present expedition. I 
was working with my own outfit at the time and so 
figured in the near-tragedy only as a spectator. 

Harmon had been trying vainly for several weeks 
to make a film showing the stalking and shooting of 
the goat among its native crags. Several fine spec- 
imens had been brought down with a rifle, but not 


[65] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


one of them under conditions of lighting and setting 
that made the resultant film at all satisfactory. Fin- 
ally he conceived the idea of making the killing part 
of the shot in bright sunlight with a goat already 
dead. To this end a big “billy,” shot on the 
cliffs a thousand feet above the glacier at twilight, 
was left where he had fallen. The next day they 
proceeded to enact a “shooting” which could be 
adequately transferred to the film. 

While my party was filming a scene in an ice cave 
at the glacier which was to be the introduction of 
my Columbia River picture, Harmon had finished 
setting the stage for his goat scenes. He planned to 
make two shots—one of his packers firing at the 
goat—propped up in a lifelike position behind a 
ledge of rock—and the other of the body of the goat 
falling to the glacier. 

The “killing” of the goat went off quite satisfac- 
torily, both in long shots and close-ups. A con- 
cealed string to the goat’s hind leg insured a realistic 
toppling over even after two bullets pierced the whis- 
kered head without budging the stiffly-braced frozen 
frame. The hitch came at the shooting of the 
old “billy’s”’ thousand-foot “leap of death” to the 
ice of the glacier. 

Harmon, in setting up his camera as near as he 


[66] 


BEHIND THE SCENES OF SCENICS 


could to the point where the “leap of death” was 
going to culminate, had made his estimate not wisely 
but too well. From where I watched through my 
binoculars it looked as though the hurtling body was 
almost certainly going to strike both camera and 
operator. Nor did the sequel prove my judgment 
wrong. Harmon, suddenly alarmed by our shouts 
and the swift increase of size of the white ball in 
his finder, ducked just in time to turn a solid collision 
into a sharp rap from a flying hoof or horn. Some 
other section of goat anatomy knocked the tripod 
out of true. Neither camera nor camera-man was 
injured; yet, with the two hundred pounds of bone 
and frozen flesh throwing up a veritable geyser of 
pulverized ice and snow at its impact with the gla- 
cier, I have always felt that the passing of the missile 
six inches farther to the right would have torn both 
to pieces. 

The picture, when I saw it on the screen in Mon- 
treal, proved most realistic—a highly thrilling and 
convincing piece of Nature photography! 

It was doubtless Harmon’s experience on this oc- 
casion which was responsible for his decision to 
confine such animal shots as he made on our present 
expedition strictly to living specimens, with close-ups 
of all kind absolutely barred. 

[67] 


CHAPTER IV 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


WITH the morning of August 20th promising at 
least a few hours of perfect photographic weather, 
we proceeded to show our thankfulness by contriving 
one or two little effects calculated to encourage Na- 
ture for providing so nearly an ideal picture setting 
at Bow Lake and Glacier. I have already described 
how the towering ice-wall, with its flanking water- 
falls, ran back in successive waves of serracs to and 
over the crest of the continental device. This was 
just as it should be for a picture; and so was the 
many-armed lake, extending from the ice-fronts 
which gave it life along a red-brown mountain wall 
to the broken water of its draining rapids. Al that 
was lacking was a proper foreground, and this we 
hastened to add by pitching a camp on the beach 
opposite the face of the main glacier. 

In regions of savage storms like the Canadian 
Rockies, camp-sites must be chosen for utility rather 
than picturesqueness. Shelter from the winds is the 
first consideration, and protecting cliffs or timber 
almost invariably close or restrict the long, unbroken 


[68] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


sweep of vista so necessary for the ideal camp-shot. 
And so we took down our tepee and set it up for a 
few hours just where it was needed to complete the 
composition of the lakescape—a jutting point of 
shingle thrown out by the clear mountain streamlet 
winding down through the flowery meadows from 
Bow Pass. 

That the jauntily-cocked pyramid of sticks and 
canvas was open to every wind that blew had nothing 
to do with the matter. Neither did the fact that a 
six-inch rise of the mountain torrent which had laid 
the tepee’s precarious foundation of pebbles would 
have swept it into the Lake. Nor yet did it matter 
that there was not a stick of firewood within three 
hundred yards. It was pictures we were after to- 
day, not shelter or comfort; and for pictures the 
location of the tepee on that wave-washed and wind- 
swept strip of pebbles was almost perfection. 

With the camera set up in the middle of the 
streamlet and turned southwest, the ideally balanced 
composition included our improvised camp in the 
foreground, the lake in the middle distance, with 
Bow Glacier—showing up much as I described it 
at our first view from the easterly arm—forming a 
sun-brilliant background against a shifting wall of 
light-shot clouds. 


[69] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Set up on the beach and turned south-east, the 
finder of the camera showed tepee and lake, the 


> and a 


rocky pine-clad islets above “The Narrows,’ 
mountain-side ripped and scarred by the savage 
claws of the bizarre Crowsfoot Glacier.’ 

With our “Ideal setting’ complete and our full 
battery of cameras in action, we shot the lake and its 
ice-crowned sentinels, mood by mood, from sunrise 
to sunset. 

There was an hour of repose in the early morning, 
when every glacier and rock and tree-covered point 
was reflected, to the last, least detail, in the glassy, 
unrippling surface. Then there was a spell of smil- 
ing under the golden glow of the light-suffused 
eastern clouds, followed by a madcap dance of mirth 
and laughter, with the direct sunlight turning the 
breeze-stirred waves to shoals of diamonds and 
emeralds. 

Laughter gave way to frowning, when shoal on 

1 Just why a glacier that is formed of snow, the universal symbol of 
immaculate whiteness, should be named from a bird whose jetty plumage 
is popularly accepted as the “blackest of things black,” I have never heard 
satisfactorily explained. The jewel of consistency, however, has never 
been set in the forehead of the god who inspires the nomenclature of 
natural features. The straggling tentacles of ice in question really do 
have a remarkable resemblance to the leg and talons of some giant fowl, 
but, being snowy in color, it is at least open to argument that some such 


bird as the ptarmigan or the White Leghorn should have been nomen- 
claturally honored in preference to the crow. 


[70] 





Photo by L. R. Freeman 


CROW’S FOOT GLACIER, LOOKING ACROSS FOOT OF BOW LAKE 





ONINHAT ANVS AHL dQ GIMOId AYAM SAUOOS SATUAS GTYOM ‘da TaWassvau 


“AdSYOH MOVd ONINMONA V AG «AAILSVOAVONUd,, 
OIdVaY AHL AO SLNAWOVYA AHL UAAO SNYUNOW NOWUVH 


UdULdIAT “YY “JT Wq 004g 





BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


shoal of murky thunderclouds poured over the con- 
tinental divide and quenched the golden flame of 
the streaming sunshine under a swiftly flung pall of 
sudden night. And when another wild blade of a 
free-lancing squall came bounding up the valley of 
the Bow and attacked the first in the middle of the 
lake, bluster and frown gave way to real tantrums. 

No star of the movies ever registered more moods 
and expressions between daylight and dark than did 
this lovely Lady of Bow Lake. By dint of much 
cranking and focussing, we transferred them, one 
after the other, to imperishable celluloid. 

A flare-back of the tantrum mood caught Harmon 
and me and the whole flock of cameras in mid-lake 
in a diminutive home-made boat while I was trying 
to pull him across to get a close-up of the Crows- 
foot Glacier. There were a few hectic moments 
when the conflict of warring airs suggested the 
classic description of a kindred storm in Drum- 
mond’s poem: 


“De win’ she blow from nor’-eas’-wes’,— 
De sout’ win’ she blow too—” 


With the lake trying to stand on end for a mad 
minute or two, and a flimsy craft that changed shape 
every time I laid hard upon the oars, there wasn’t 


[71] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


much to do but try to keep the so-called bow to- 
ward the highest wave of the moment. That, and 
Harmon’s lively baling, sufficed by a margin not 
quite comfortable. 

Nor were our apprehensions entirely on the score 
of the negative buoyancy of the movie camera. It 
takes a very warm blooded man not to chill in swim- 
ming over a hundred yards in glacier water, and we 
were a good half mile off shore when the little dis- 
turbance kicked up. We had no trouble reaching 
the beach once the centre of the squall went on about 
its business. 

The lesson in the ways of a wind with a mountain 
lake came in good time. It prevented us from try- 
ing the same kind of argosy on other waters 
that were broader and deeper and just as cold 
as that temperamental patch of drippings from 
Bow Glacier. 

As the sky cleared toward the end of the afternoon 
we prepared to release our first pigeons. The mes- 
sages, giving the names of the several radio stations 
already picked up and additions to lists of supplies 
that were to be sent to us some weeks later at Jasper, 
were typed compactly on the oiled paper provided 
for that purpose. After pulling loose several tail 
feathers in an endeavor to attach the tightly folded 


[72] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


slips as directed by experts, we finally abandoned 
that plan and slipped them inside of the leg-rings 
worn by each bird to carry its registered number. 
Tied with silk threads, the tiny rolls appeared in a 
way to ride quite securely. 

Two birds—a pair—were released simultaneously. 
Teaming up at once, they rose in widening circles 
for perhaps a thousand feet, and then made off, ap- 
parently with great confidence, on a line a bit to the 
east of the general direction of the valley of the Bow. 
As this was almost the exact compass bearing of 
Banff, we felt certain they would be pecking at the 
door of their home cote inside of a couple of hours. 

Just why they failed to fulfil our hopes we never 
learned, but the chances are that, failing to find— 
or possibly failing to effect entrance after finding— 
their former home, they went in search of another. 
The messages were mailed to Banff a few days later, 
but whoever found the pigeons evidently thought 
them too attractive to part with. 

The astonishing adaptability of the carrier pigeons 
to the roughest of travel conditions was a source 
of never-ending wonder to us throughout the trip. 
Apparently not the least troubled by the swaying of 
their box on the top of a pack, nor even by the crush- 
ing in or knocking off of their flimsy home by an 


[73] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


overhanging limb, they were always ready for their 
sparsely-doled ration of cracked grains and never 
failed to meet with a caressing peck the friendly 
finger poked in by way of greeting through a tiny 
window. We heard them crooning their content- 
ment on nights when the camp was blanketed in snow 
and on days of grief and drizzle in the sodden flooded 
flats. They would even chirrup reassuringly to each 
other when their pack-horse was bogged to his eyes, 
with the next moment threatening their own engulf- 
ment in glacial mud. 

We found the game little aerial navigators boon 
companions from first to last, and I never released 
one of the warm little bodies from my hand to begin 
its orlentating spirals above the icy peaks that sep- 
arated it from its home cote without a real tug at the 
heart strings. 

Three days’ rest with prime grazing had made a 
great difference in the condition of the horses by the 
time we broke camp again on the 21st, and, though 
travel conditions continued no less arduous than be- 
fore, much steadier progress was made. Bow Pass, 
a little below timber-line, was reached and crossed 
by an easy grade. The crest of the watershed—in 
an open meadow thick with lush grass and fragrant 
with mountain flowers—sloped so gradually in both 


[74] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


directions that the divide was barely discernible. 

The descent to the valley of the Mistaya—rough, 
abrupt and slippery though it proved—was effected 
with the knocking off of only three or four packs. 
One of these, unfortunately, contained the radio. 
The pack-box of the latter, brass-screwed and pad- 
ded on the inside, was constructed to withstand rough 
usage, and that is why it only changed shape instead 
of flying apart the first time the hulking cayuse carry- 
ing it was brought up sharp as his overly-broad load 
jammed between two close-growing pines. 

The stout case of tough cedar stood that first colli- 
sion astonishingly well; also the buffetings of a 
somersaulting roll down a slide of avalanche-strewn 
rocks to a temporary resting place in a bower of 
sylvan beauty where a crystal-clear spring bubbled 
out of the limestone of the opposite wall of the can- 
yon. It was even recognizable as a box after it had 
been on the under side of the pack for ten minutes 
while its bearer sunk to his ears in a bottomless patch 
of muskeg. 

But when a chafed lash-rope parted and let the 
casket slide down and dangle against ‘“‘Wolverine’s”’ 
temperamental heels, the moment had come when it 
was no longer possible to follow to the letter the ad- 
monition of the Banff electrical expert, who had 


[75] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


warned us solemnly that the usefulness of the set 
would depend upon our keeping the batteries hooked 
up exactly as he had assembled them. Even finding 
the component parts was difficult enough, for 
“Wolverine” had proved his qualifications as a radio 
horse by “broadcasting” the battered fragments of 
the outfit through half a mile of swamp, timber and 
boulder-covered mountain-side. 

Abandoning hopes of ever assembling again a 
wreck which, like Humpty-Dumpty, might well have 
defied the best technical efforts of ‘‘all the King’s 
horses and all the King’s men,” we simply collected 
such pieces we could find, roped them up in the 
shattered case and took them along as a potential 
movie “prop’—something calculated to give a touch 
of topical interest to the camp shots. 

That the battered batch of junk could ever again 
be coaxed into performing its original function no 
one but our sanguine French-Canadian cook had the 
temerity to maintain, and even Ulus’ soaring op- 
timism, along with the rest of the outfit, underwent 
a serious dampening when that containing the rem- 
nants of the radio came in for the worst soaking of 
all the packs, while several of the horses went down 
in the long boggy ford above the Waterfowl Lakes. 

A splendid buck, chased by the dogs, gave us a 


[76] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


wonderful exhibition of grace and agility at one of 
the upper rapids of the Mistaya. Submerged to his 
horn-tips in a roaring foam-white chute at the end of 
his first jump, he rebounded with the airy grace of 
Venus emerging from the Cyprian sea-froth at his 
second, to land solidly upon the farther bank of the 
torrent. “Buster” and “Tip,” with lolling tongues, 
were left gaping foolishly and yelping futile protest 
in the midst of the muddy seep to which they had 
skidded in bringing up short as the tumbling cascade 
yawned below them. ‘They thought they had been 
running an ordinary four-footed animal, and it had 
turned out to be something scarcely less elusive than 
the goose whose whirring wings had baffled them in 
the Bow. 

A herd of a dozen deer, offering easy shots as they 
watched us file down the valley, were passed unmo- 
lested. This was for two reasons. We were still 
too heavily packed to have room to carry meat, and 
we were also about to enter a region in which there 
were few points at which an hour’s climb with a rifle 
would not result in goat or sheep. We had neither 
the time nor the inclination to shoot for trophies, a 
pastime that is more and more coming to be restricted 
to the novice and the tenderfoot. The killing of big 
game with modern high-power rifles has become so 


L77] 


“ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


ridiculously easy in all parts of the world as no 
longer to deserve the name of sport. 

Park boundaries, which we touched and crossed 
at several points, interfered somewhat at first with 
our shooting for meat at the moment a shortage oc- 
curred. As soon as pack-room was available, how- 
ever, it was easy to lay in enough of a supply in the 
unrestricted sections to carry us through those in 
which shooting was not legal. Meat keeps a long 
time at those high cold altitudes, and after the first 
week we were rarely out of it during the whole trip. 

The Mistaya was a roaring boulder-strewn torrent 
where we first came down to it, but at the end of a 
mile broadened out into meandering channels empty- 
ing into the head of Upper Waterfowl Lake. Seyvy- 
eral deep fordings and a long, wet wade through 
boggy marshes took us to a precarious camping 
ground among the burned timber on the sloping 
mountainside east of the head of the lake. The lat- 
ter, beautiful to the eye, especially from a high al- 
titude, was too boggy around the border to permit 
even the dipping of drinking water without risk of 
being mired. 

We remained over here for a day to climb a couple 
of thousand feet to the summit of the easterly ridge 
for a vantage from which to take pictures of the 


[78] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


splendid panorama of Howse Peak and Pyramid, 
with the silvered slivers of the Upper and Lower 
Waterfowl Lakes, harnessed in tandem by the gleam- 
ing ribbons of the Mistaya’s channels, prancing in 
the sunlit foreground. 

As it was impossible to ford the Mistaya in the 
canyons below, the only practicable route on to 
the Saskatchewan was to retrace our steps around 
the head of the lakes and go down the western side. 
This entailed deep but not especially troublesome. 
fording; or, rather, it would not have been trouble- 
some had the horses had the sense to keep to the 
crossings into which they were headed. 

Among the animals which thought they knew a 
better way was the young mare carrying the salt and 
sugar. Rolled head under at the little riffle below 
the ford and carried down a couple of hundred feet 
before pawing onto solid footing, the venturesome 
filly trotted jauntily out, smeared herself with muck 
by a roll in the nearest mud-hole, and then galloped 
on to set the pace for the pack-train all the rest of 
the morning. 

Comprehension of the reason for the culprit’s 
blitheness of spirit came when we unpacked at the 
end of the afternoon. What with leakage of brine 
from the salt sacks and syrup from the sugar, Nelly 


[79] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


had reduced the weight of her pack at the rate of 
rather better than ten pounds to the mile all the way 
to the Saskatchewan. 

This must have been the sort of thing which 
‘“Soapy” had in mind when he spoke of letting Na- 
ture take her course in the matter of reducing packs. 
To do the veteran justice, he seemed as much upset 
as any of us over the loss, and even promised to pun- 
ish a possible repetition of the offence by giving 
Nelly the dried fruit and dehydrated vegetables to 
carry when we took the trail again. This he forgot 
to do, however, much to our ultimate sorrow. 

We came down to the Saskatchewan a mile above 
where it receives the Mistaya in the shadow of pin- 
nacled Mount Murchison, and just below the junc- 
tion of the North Fork and Howse River. 

Although not over from fifteen to twenty-five miles 
from its principal glacial sources, it is already a 
mighty river, varying in width from five hundred 
yards to half a mile according to the stage. 

Nothing allows a river to accumulate volume so 
rapidly as a series of great glacial reservoirs tapped 
by its head waters, and in few if any of the great 
mountain system of the world are these ice feeders 
located so favorably for the rapid augmentation of 
flow as in the Columbia Icefield region. 


[80] 








sez te 


mas: 











Photo by L. R. Freeman 


HARMON COMING OUT OF A DEEP FORD 
OF THE SASKATCHEWAN 


suvg ‘Uuouwsny uoskg fo Ksajzanoj 


NVMAHOLVASVS AHL AO 


SHYOd AHL LY GuOA ONINWIMS daad 





BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


The Amazon, which probably discharges fifty 
times the amount of water into the Atlantic as does 
the Saskatchewan into Hudson’s Bay, almost cer- 
tainly has no tributary with a flow a hundred miles 
from the summits of the Cordillera of the Andes 
equal to that of the Canadian river twenty-five miles 
from the Columbia Icefield. I am also inclined to 
think that the same would hold true in a general 
way of the Yangtse, flowing east from the Tibetan 
plateau, and the Indus and Brahmaputra, flowing 
south. 

The Athabaska, flowing north from the Columbia 
Icefield, probably has an even greater volume in its 
upper reaches than has the Saskatchewan. On the 
other hand, the drainage to the Columbia, by the 
Wood and Bush rivers, is much smaller. 

Working cautiously from bar to bar and covering 
perhaps seven hundred yards of quick-flowing, but 
not dangerous water, we reached the north bank 
without swimming the horses or seriously wetting a 
pack. 

Camp was pitched in the timber at a magnificent 
point of vantage just below the mouth of the North 
Fork. ‘That the place was an old Indian rendezvous 
was indicated by rotting tepee poles, the bent willow 
frames of steam bath-houses, and deep layers of 


[81] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


musty hair scraped by the tanners from hides of deer, 
elk and moose. 

The Indians of the plains never established per- 
manent habitations far inside the Rockies, but that 
they hunted the vast system to the very rim of the 
ice-caps of the continental divide was indicated by 
their ancient and long disused trails, which we found 
on every pass and often far down into the timber. 

Never breaking down the earth save by the soft 
pat of moccasins or by the pressure of unshod hoofs, 
and rarely if ever cutting out timber, fallen or stand- 
ing, these old hunting parties still left behind them 
fragments of trails that could be improved only by 
the liberal use of ax and pick. Their grades are 
invariably as favourable as the topography permits. 

Not satisfied either with the lighting or the back- 
grounds for his original motion-picture of the pack- 
train crossing the Saskatchewan, Harmon decided 
to wait over and make another under better condi- 
tions. Two days of warm, cloudy weather were 
unfavourable for pictures but did have the effect 
of starting one of the heaviest late-summer rises that 
the Rockies have known in many years. 

The river, fed from its many melting glaciers, had 
risen two feet and probably more than doubled in 
volume when the third day brought bright skies and 


[82] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


a flood of hot sunshine. With the crossing picked 
for the pictorial possibilities rather than for its 
facilities as a ford, it was evident at the outset that 
we were in for a lively time in taking the pack-train 
over the swollen river. For this reason dummy 
packs of canvas-wrapped fir boughs were substituted 
for boxes, bed rolls and the regular run of camp 
stuff. This plan had the double advantage of giving 
the horses lighter loads and of effectually precluding 
the possibility of a further soaking of outfit and pro- 
visions. There had been so great an increase in the 
volume of the river that Harmon and La Casse suc- 
ceeded only on the second attempt in crossing with 
the movie outfit at the broad, shallow ford which 
we had waded with so little trouble three days pre- 
viously. Setting up the camera on a high bench on 
the south bank, just above a point where almost the 
whole flow of the Saskatchewan was concentrated 
into a single two hundred-yard-wide channel, they 
signalled for us to come on with the pack-train. 

‘“Soapy” led the way, with Baptie and me urging 
on the huddled, reluctant horses from the rear. 
“Buster,” our collie-husky cross-breed, rode one of 
the packs. “Tip,” our camp-following Indian mon- 
grel, who had funked a similar seat, I carried under 
my free arm. 


[83 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


‘“Soapy’s” mare was swimming the moment she 
stepped off the gravel bar along the shore; likewise 
the rest of the animals as they followed suit. Sev- 
veral of them were ducked head-under as they lost 
their footings, to come up sputtering and wild-eyed, 
with each eager to climb to safety on the back of its 
neighbour. 

Packs were badly bumped and jostled, with two 
or three bundles of young Christmas trees breaking — 
loose and floating downstream in mute vindication 
of the wisdom of substituting them for the sugar and 
the radio. “Buster” was knocked from his seat at 
the first souse; but “Tip,” clinging with an almost 
cat-like grip, managed to keep hooked on to the 
crook of my arm. 

Orientating themselves as the shock of the first 
plunge passed, the horses spread out and began 
lunging along in the wake of the leader, which 
‘‘Soapy” was trying hard to keep swimming at an 
angle that would carry her out at the only practicable 
landing on the cut and broken opposite bank. 

Seeing the swift current was setting him down 
much faster than had been calculated, with the al- 
ternative of making the landing or going onto, and 
possibly under, a pile of drift logs blocking the en- 
trance of a side channel opening just below, he slid 


[84] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


off backwards and towed by the tail to give his horse 
a better chance. Still failing to close with the land- 
ing fast enough, “Soapy” wisely headed his horse 
back to midstream so as to give the drift a wide 
berth and make a bar where the river broadened and 
shallowed below. 

J would have done better to follow “Soapy’s” lead 
while there was time and room to avoid the treach- 
erous bank. With my powerful mount swimming 
strongly and with plenty of reserve strength, how- 
ever, I was reluctant to forego the chance to make 
the landing as prearranged and so keep all the pack 
animals that would follow as near the camera as 
possible. 

We made the bank, but too far down by a scant 
yard or two. The caving earth broke back under 
pawing hoofs, and both “Jerry” and I were doused 
well below the foam-flecked surface when we tum- 
bled back into the icy current. 

The shifty ‘“Tip,” sensing his chance, jumped at 
exactly the right moment, landing on dry ground 
with an almost dry hide. 

I slipped clear of the saddle to give my mount a 
better chance to recover his balance, but climbed 
back with alacrity on discovering that all of the 
immediately adjacent river was filled with floun- 


[85] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


dering and more or less up-ended pack-horses, all 
in difficulties similar to those of Jerry and myself, 
and for the same reason. 

The next moment the whole mob of us were 
slapped by the ten-mile current against the jutting 
jam of logs. 

With each of us trying to kick and climb over his 
wallowing, snorting neighbour, it was exceptionally 
good luck that none of the various participants in 
the mélée were much banged up. By really good 
fortune there was not enough water drawing beneath 
the logs to create a dangerous under-suck, nor yet 
enough flowing over them to tempt the horses to risk 
broken legs by climbing the obstruction. After we 
had pawed and jostled each other for a lively minute 
or so, the current got sufficiently behind the milling 
mob to roll it around the end of the barrier, from 
where it was straight swimming to the bar below. 

Seeing the high-class action that was going to 
waste under the high bank, Harmon brought his 
long-distance shot to a sudden end and rushed down 
for a close-up. Setting up with feverish haste, he 
was just in time for the finale at the log jam. 

There was a twinkle in his eye when, a few minutes 
later, he sauntered up to where we were drying out 
by tripping an Indian dance round a log fire and cas- 


[86] 


BOW LAKE TO THE SASKATCHEWAN 


ually asked if we’d mind doing the first part of that 
close-up over again! ‘“Soapy” replied with a guffaw 
on behalf of the horses, while I made similar re- 
sponse on my Own account. 

Harmon admitted that the request was not made 
seriously, and that he fully understood without trying 
it personally that a drift-pile throwing off a ten-mile- 
an-hour current was no place to take a pack-train, 
even one carrying nothing more valuable than 
Christmas trees. We did make the return by swim- 
ming the same channel, however, but starting high 
enough up to work well clear of the cut bank and the 
jutting log-pile. 

While filming the rough, steep gorge of the North 
Fork the following morning we were presented with 
the opportunity to make what turned out to be one 
of our best wild animal shots. A black bear playing 
with her cubs on a patch of sunlit rocks was the sub- 
ject. After a surreptitious shooting of the amusing’ 
antics of the trio with his long-focus lens from a 
comfortable distance, Harmon suggested that it 
might bring about an interesting variation of action 
if I would close in and make our presence known by 
some such friendly action as throwing a stone or giv- 
ing a lusty yell. I chose the latter as the less bellig- 
erent means of creating the desired diversion. 


[87] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


The effect of my Apache war-whoop, delivered 
from cupped hands at not over fifty feet from the 
three pairs of sharp, backlaid ears, was all that could 
have been wished for. Without even looking to see 
where the blast came from, that capable old mother 
swatted swiftly at a cub with either paw, and then 
herded them pell-mell up a nearby jack-pine. 

The instant the hindmost of the precious pair was 
clear of the ground, round she wheeled and came 
charging back to settle with the enemy. Full tilt 
she came, right to the brink of the gorge, and there, 
perforce, she was brought to an abrupt and sliding 
stop. 

That fifty-foot-wide canyon of the North Fork of 
the Saskatchewan was the keystone of our strategy, 
for we and the camera were on one side of it and the 
temperamental Mother Bruin on the other. That is 
quite the best way to arrange bear pictures in the 
open, especially when guns have been left in camp. 
The film turned out quite perfect to the last detail, 
even showing the cubs peeking round the sheltering 
tree to watch their mother shake an admonitory paw 
at us. 


[88] 


CHAPTER V 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


WE had our first serious trouble with far-straying 
horses during the three days spent in camp at the 
forks of the Saskatchewan. This was probably due 
to the fact that at least three or four of the animals 
knew exactly where they were, and that the rich grass 
of the fertile Kootenay Plains—a broadening of the 
lower river valley—was not many hours away. 

Rob, the wrangler, who knew no peace of mind 
when a single unit of his bunch was unaccounted for, 
spent many hours each day turning back and round- 
ing up the runaways. Using hobbles in a land of 
burned and fallen timber entailed too much risk of 
“hanging up” a horse over a log; indeed, my own 
powerful and spirited mare, La Belle, which “Soapy” 
had conditioned especially to carry the two hundred 
and forty pounds which I weighed at the beginning 
of the trip, snagged herself seriously in the belly with 
all four legs free. 

A Chinook wind from the Pacific, warm and soft 
as new milk, had been playing on the icefields to the 
north and west during all of the sixty hours we re- 


[89] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


mained in camp on the bench above the junction of 
the two main branches of the Saskatchewan. When 
we took the trail again on the morning of August 
26th the humid spell was over and a brilliant flood 
of yellow sunshine was pouring from a deep turquoise 
sky unflecked by cloud or undimmed by haze to the 
farthest segment of peak-notched skyline. 

There was a diamond glitter on the lofty pinnacle 
of Forbes and the serrated line of its sister peaks 
along the continental divide, while near and far 
every mountain-side was streaked with the “down- 
ward smoke” of waterfalls, shimmering brocades of 
jeweled silk in the sunshine, flutters of wind-blown 
carded wool in the shadows. 

The Saskatchewan was out of its banks at the 
forks, spreading over the flats and encroaching upon 
the high mark of the spring floods. In the narrow 
gorge of the North Fork, where the water was up 
from twenty to twenty five feet in three days, what 
had been cascades and abrupt falls of six feet and 
more were completely wiped out by a solid white 
stretch of tumbling torrent. 

As long as the horses could find footings on the 
rocky lower slopes of the long massif of Mount Wil- 
son which bulwarks the North Fork to the east, we 
were able to avoid the spreading floods on the flats. 


[90] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


When talus and snow-slide débris finally presented 
unsurmountable barriers, there was no alternative 
but to push on up the valley along the inundated 
bottoms. 

Then it was we learned the meaning of real water 
trouble. Although successful in avoiding a com- 
plete ford of the main river, there were the endless 
networks of back channels to be passed, many of 
them deep and steep-banked. With the surging 
water practically opaque, there was no telling 
whether the next step was going to land a horse to 
his fetlocks or up to his mane. 

It was here that we paid the penalty for the false 
courage bred in the horses as a consequence of our 
little exhibition for the movie with the dummy packs. 
Up to that time nearly all of them had been extremely 
nervous about tackling a deep ford; afterwards they 
had altogether too much confidence. Like the ad- 
vocates of inland canal extension, theirs might have 
been the slogan, “The water way is the cheapest and 
best.” Let the road we had blazed for them be 
rocky, boggy, or blocked with dead-falls, and forth- 
with the three or four leading spirits among them 
would bolt toward supposed easier going in the near- 
est water, be it the boulder bed of a cascade or the 
cut-bank of a slough. 


Lor] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


After a few days we came to understand and to 
anticipate these outbreaks toward the new freedom; 
but that first morning on the North Fork of the 
Saskatchewan we were caught quite unprepared. 

Without the blink of an eye, Nelly, the sugar and 
salt horse, walked off a bank of glacial silt that was 
caving and receding before the attack of the grey- 
green torrent of the main river. Rolled over and 
whisked away in an instant, she came up with a 
blithe snort and started swimming straight for Hud- 
son’s Bay. 

What with the twelve-mile current and her pur- 
poseful pawing, she travelled at five times the speed 
at which we could force our horses through the brush 
and mud of the flooded flats, and was out of sight 
around the next bend before we were well started. 

Of course she had to strike bottom in time, but it 
was only by the rarest of luck that the intercepting 
gravel bar, a quarter of a mile below, chanced to 
run out from our side of the river. Even here the 
perverse filly was in two minds about rejoining us, 
stoutly declining to move a step shoreward until La 
Casse waded out to bring her back. 

All the sugar and salt salvaged from this later and 
longer baptism was in the shape of the dirty brown 
chunks which resulted from the reduction by ax of 


[92] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


the indurated slabs left after the containing sacks had 
been dried all night by the fire. 

Several other packs were badly soaked as a con- 
sequence of plunges into deep water, nearly all of 
which appeared to be due to the new-born mania of 
the horses to cure their trail troubles by hydropathic 
treatment. 

The radio was the worst casualty, undergoing a 
complete submergence when the horse carrying it 
stepped off into the river and was carried down un- 
der the horizontal trunks of several undermined pine 
trees before he found a place to climb out. 

As the radio, due to previous disintegrative bang- 
ings and bumpings, was already rated a total loss, we 
were less concerned over its wetting than about that 
of the sugar and salt. It was now inevitable that 
even the miserable remnants of the latter must be ex- 
hausted weeks before replenishment would be pos- 
sible. 

What could hardly have been other than a disas- 
trous attempt to ford the main river was avoided 
by a rough and precarious climb over a jutting 
headland, where two or three men to a horse were 
necessary at one point to keep the animals from 
sliding back to the valley. We pitched camp oppo- 
site the Alexandra late in the afternoon, having 


[93] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


made about eight miles. Several of the horses were 
so played out as to be unable to stand until their 
packs were removed. 

The human element of the party was holding up 
fairly well physically, but the mental atmosphere of 
the camp was well reflected in a note which “Soapy” 
wrote, to be left on a forked stick for his partner who 
was expected to follow later with a hunting party. 
Slightly expurgated, this missive concluded as fol- 
lows: 


“If you need any sugar or salt, dip it out of the 
Saskatch. Nine-tenths of ours is already in the 
drink and the rest most likely goes to-morrow. If 
you see any horseshoes floating down stream, look 
under them for my cayuses. Deep water navigation 
by pack-train ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.” 


The main North Fork and the Alexandra must be 
about equal in average volume. The former con- 
tinues north for some miles before bending to the 
west to its source under the Saskatchewan Glacier, 
itself a tentacle of the Columbia Icefield. The Al- 
exandra flows directly from the west, deriving its 
waters about equally from the Mount Lyell Icefield 
and that of the Columbia. Alexandra Glacier, lead- 
ing up to the continental divide under the peak of the 


[94] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


same name, was partly visible from our camp on the 
North Fork, but although little over eight miles dis- 
tant, we were to be two days in reaching it. 

The camp at the junction of the Alexandra and 
North Fork bears the gruesome but not unfitting 
name of ‘““[he Graveyard.” It is located at the focus 
of a four-way convergence of important mountain 
routes. ‘hat to the south—the one by which we had 
come—leads by the North Fork, Mistaya and Bow 
to Lake Louise. That up the North Fork leads 
finally to Jasper by alternative trails over Nigel or 
Wilcox Passes. What is for considerable distances 
-hardly more than a blazed trail to-day follows the 
route of the projected Banff to Jasper highway, 
which, when constructed, will be one of the finest 
scenic roads that can ever be built anywhere in the 
world. 

The westward route—it could hardly fairly be 
called a trail—from ‘““The Graveyard” runs up the 
valley of the Alexandra to the Castleguard branch 
of the river, to come to a blind end against 
the Saskatchewan Glacier tentacles of the Columbia 
Icefield. This was the way we planned to follow 
as far as it went, and then endeavor to go directly 
across the icefield on a short-cut to the head of the 
Sunwapta and the Arctic slope of the divide. 


[95] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


The easterly trail from “The Graveyard” winds 
over the mountain ridge to Pinto Lake and a junction 
with the trail leading down the Cline to the lower 
Saskatchewan and on to Banff. This latter trail, 
Winter snows permitting, was to be a part of our 
return route to the south. 

Due to its strategic location, the camp at the mouth 
of the Alexandra had been a hunting rendezvous for 
many years, first for the Indians and later for the 
farthest-faring of the parties from Banff or Jasper. 
Skinning game and discarding unsatisfactory spec- 
imens resulted in the accumulation of many bones 
and heads, and these grisly heaps of unwanted tro- 
phies of the chase give point to the name of 
“Graveyard.” 

Unsuccessful hunters are occasionally charged 
with having salvaged from “The Graveyard’s” va- 
ried stock of discards the trophies denied to their err- 
ing rifles. I have seen worse heads proudly dis- 
played in trophy-rooms than some of the specimens 
thrown away to bleach on the flood-scarred flats of 
the North Fork of the Saskatchewan. 

Another humid night, followed by a clear, hot 
morning, brought still higher water. La Casse, in- 
deed, was inclined to believe that both North Fork 
and Alexandra were at higher stages than when he 


[96] 


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BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


had gone over the same route the previous year when 
the spring thaw was culminating and the rivers were 
near the crest of the June rise. Further damage to 
provisions was inevitable in the deep, swift fords 
ahead, but this prospective loss was far less serious 
than the threat to the considerable part of Harmon’s 
photographic supplies, for which no water-tight con- 
tainers had been provided. In all of the veteran’s 
twenty years of pack-train travel in the Rockies he 
had never found it necessary to take special precau- 
tions to protect his photographic supplies from water. 
Now the lack of such protection threatened seriously 
to jeopardize the success of the expedition. With 
the movie films and my own roll-films in cans, the 
principal concern was over the hundred or more 
packets of Harmon’s special film-pack and the large 
motion-picture machine. The compact little “Sept” 
movie camera, with its sixteen feet of film which ran 
through at the release of a spring, rode with Harmon 
on his horse to be ready for emergency shots. Most 
of our “still” cameras were also carried where they 
could be given a certain amount of personal attention 
in case of trouble. 

The best we could do for the threatened camera 
and supplies was to give their respective pack-boxes 
extra wrappings of canvas before pushing on to 


L97] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


breast the flood that was sweeping down the valley 
of the Alexandra. Provisions and bedding would 
have to take their chances. 

We crossed the score of scattering channels of the 
North Fork without trouble. The declivity of the 
valley had increased rapidly within the last two 
miles, so that the swift-flowing water carried all of 
the light glacial silt down to deposit it in the opener 
reaches above the box canyon where we had photo- 
graphed the bears. This made for many broad, 
shallow channels with hard, rocky bottoms, quite 
simple and safe to ford. 

At the mouth of the Alexandra conditions quite 
the reverse were encountered. Here the floods had 
risen to cover the low flats in one unbroken lake, 
with little to indicate the course of the deep, per- — 
pendicular-banked, meandering channels by which 
it was traversed. After bogging the horses re- 
peatedly in attempting to work along the base of 
the slope where the waters of the lake lapped the 
mountain-side, “Soapy” decided to try to avoid the 
flooded area entirely by taking the pack-train up 
through the timber. This led us into quite the 
roughest and most punishing going we had yet faced. 

With a rocky, broken slope of all of forty degrees 
to traverse, progress would have been quite difficult 


[98] 


| BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


enough without any additional natural obstacles. It 
was the timber which finally took the heart out of us, 
man and horse. ‘This had been burned in patches. 
The trees: of the unburned stretches stood thickly 
enough to hang up a pack now and then but still 
permitted a slow but fairly steady advance. The 
passage of the tongues of charred slope where the 
fires had swept presented a far more serious problem. 

With the bristling young growth standing thick as 
the spines on the back of a ruffled porcupine, there 
was really only one safe and satisfactory way of tak- 
ing the pack-train through it. That was to cut out 
a swath with an ax. This was slow—especially 
where the dead-falls laid their trickiest traps under- 
foot—but it was also sure. 

If the horses had been content to wait and let us 
turn to and systematically clear a way ahead for them, 
things would not have been so bad. It might have 
taken the whole day to do it, but we would ultimately 
have brought them through to the solider flats above 
the overflow lake without further boggings. Un- 
fortunately, however, action had already become too 
hectic to make a cool, deliberate analysis of the sit- 
uation possible on the part of either horses or packers. 

With pack-covers and tempers—both human and 
equine—torn to tatters at the end of the first hundred 


L99] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


yards of arboreal tunneling, men and horses said and 
did things to each other which effectually precluded 
further peaceful and dispassionate consideration of 
the situation. The decision in such arguments as 
were indulged in went mostly to ‘“Wolverine” and 
the two or three other Indian cayuses which drove 
home their points with steel-shod hoofs. Even a 
packer hasn’t much to say to that kind of repartee, 
especially when the horse makes his point first. 

‘Soapy” voiced his protests in two languages and 
twice as many Indian dialects—until Nelly, the salt 
and sugar-dissolver, with her forelegs clasped in the 
embrace of a pair of locked dead-falls, lashed out 
with her hind hoofs and planted a love-tap a few 
inches below the nerve centers of the old woodsman’s 
diaphragm. ‘“‘Soapy” was quiet for some minutes 
after that caress, doubtless musing on the ingratitude 
of a colt which he had raised on a bottle after its 
mother had been lost in an ice-choked ford of the 
lower Saskatchewan four years previously. 

None of the rest of us had to endure the mental 
anguish of being kicked by his own bottle-baby, but 
that didn’t reduce by a whit the physical discomfort 
of having a horseshoe clapped over one’s ear just as 
he was bending to disentangle the lash-rope of a scat- 
tered pack. And we used to think it was lucky to 

[ 100] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


find a horseshoe! Doubtless it all depends upon 
how and where you find it. I can only testify that 
as an ear-muff the luck attaching to a horseshoe is 
of a distinctly negative character. 

It was a number of little incidents of the kind 
indicated which made difficult, and finally impos- 
sible, the co-operation between horse and man imper- 
ative for the overcoming of the almost prohibitive 
obstacles incident to taking the pack-train any great 
distance along that steeply-sloping, heavily timbered 
mountain side. Sixteen horses starring in as many 
different directions, with only five men to follow 
them, did not make for linear progress, and the 
difficulty of rounding them up was considerably 
hampered by the fact almost every wake was strewn 
with fragments of broken packs. ‘Things like the 
contents of smashed grub-boxes and a snag-ripped 
sack of rolled oats take a lot of salvaging in soggy 
foot-deep moss and fallen timber. 

Constantly reslinging packs and dragging fugitive 
horses back into line, we had made scarcely more 
than a mile by early afternoon. To reach the near- 
est practicable camping ground before dark, there- 
fore, left no other alternative than to drop back to 
the flooded flats and see what could be done in 
floundering across them. 


[ror] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


There was still an unbroken sheet of water stretch- 
ing from wall to wall of the valley where we came 
out of the timber into the open again, but “Soapy,” 
shouting optimistically that the lake was much 
shallower than below, plunged boldly in to show the 
pack-train how the thing should be done. Possibly 
he was correct as to the soundings of an average 
cross-section right across the valley, but I have 
serious doubts if there was a profounder pool in all 
of the Alexandra than that into which our doughty 
old leader pushed his lithe-limbed thoroughbred at 
the initial plunge. 

Horse and man disappeared completely from 
sight and it was all of two or three seconds before 
anything but bubbles and swirls marked the point of 
engulfment. From the fact that mount preceded 
rider back into the sunlight, I assumed that the hole 
had been deep enough to allow both of them to roll 
over at least once without flicking spur or horseshoe 
above the surface. The main surge of the river ap- 
peared to have undermined the root-bound bank to 
a depth of ten or fifteen feet, and “Soapy” and his 
horse, under the impulse of their rush from above, 
had dived most of the way to the bottom. A horse is 
a very buoyant animal. On very few occasions have 
I seen one completely submerged for so long. 


[ 102 | 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


“Soapy’s” Rooseveltian touch had gone with his 
glasses, but, with two inches additional droop to the 
sherifhan moustachios, he was more than ever the 
tusked bull walrus. There was little of the basso 
profundo roar of the walrus, however, in the throaty 
croak with which he accompanied the pantomime 
intended to convey to us that, along with a lot of 
glacial water and mud, he had swallowed his 
“dining-room set.” 

When Rob explained that “dining-room set” was 
‘“Soapy’s” facetious euphemism for his false-teeth, 
Harmon and I choked back our ill-timed mirth and 
began forthwith applying vigorous first-aid in the 
form of lusty slaps on the sufferer’s buckskin-shirted 
back. Fortunately, only the mud and water had 
taken a through passage. The teeth, hung up some- 
where in the upper reaches of “‘Soapy’s” cesophagus, 
finally were dislodged by the coughing induced by 
the slaps and gradually jiggered along back to where 
_ they belonged. 

Two horses which had plunged in after the leader 
swam on to a firm footing on the flats, but only after 
both of their packs had been doused completely un- 
der. As continuing on this course this would have 
meant more damaged provisions, to say nothing of 
the risk to cameras and photographic supplies, we 


[103 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


decided to try to skirt the margin of the overflow for 
a few hundred yards farther. This was accom- 
panied by several more deep and troublesome bog- 
gings, but we continued to wallow along toward a 
point at which it appeared practicable finally to 
begin wading the flats. 

The last fifty yards was over a sharply sloping 
shelf of broken limestone, which was slippery with 
moss and streaked with seepage from the mountain- 
side. Horse after horse lost its footing in the helter- 
skelter scramble across, but none of the first dozen 
went sufficiently out of control to do a tail-spin or 
nose-dive. 

When my own turn came the exercise of ordinary 
common-sense would have warned me that the 
proper thing to do was to dismount and give my 
horse a fairer chance by leading him over the most 
treacherous part of the slippery ledge. The animal 
which I was riding temporarily in place of the sure- 
footed “La Belle,” who was still too sore from her 
snagging to carry a saddle, was one of those secured 
at Lake Louise to replace the two strays of the orig- 
inal pack-train. He was a powerful and willing 
brute but handicapped by a splay hoof and a terp- 
sichorean temperament that inclined him to spells of 


[104] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


toe-dancing at highly inopportune places and oc- 
casions. 

It was the bad hoof which started the trouble at 
the sloping shelf. When “Le Diable’s” fore feet 
commenced slipping he tried to remedy the difficulty 
by rearing them high in the air and walking on his 
hind ones. As one of the latter carried the deformed 
hoof, stability, far from being improved, became a 
deal more precarious. In fact, “Le Diable,” after a 
clattering spell of buck-and-winging with his steel- 
shod hoofs striking sparks from the rock, started to 
topple over backward. 

I kicked free of the stirrups as I felt him going 
and, more by luck than calculated intent, struck on 
my back on the upper side of the shelf. The impact 
jolted me all the way up the spine, but this was of 
small moment in view of my good fortune in landing 
in a niche which prevented my jarred anatomy from 
sliding down to interfere with the highly intricate 
pas seul by which “Le Diable” was expressing his 
elation over the fact that he had ridded himself of a 
rider without losing his own balance. 

His triumph was short lived. When the splay 
hoof skidded on a patch of dewy moss “Le Diable,” 
like Lucifer, came out of the skies with a bang. 


[105 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Caroming from the ledge against a jack-pine, he was 
flung back to the rock again, this time with all four 
hoofs pawing the air. And it was in this ignomin- 
ious posture that the prideful devil-dancer of a mo- 
ment before slid down to and stuck fast in the morass 
of mud and burned timber at the edge of the over- 
flow. 

A bit dazed from the jolt, I was still able to scram- 
ble to my feet and lend a hand to the packers in 
extricating my mount from his difficulties. A sore 
spot between the shoulder blades, where the box of 
my camera had interposed to break an otherwise even 
contact with the face of the ledge, was my only sou- 
venir of the occasion. ‘‘Le Diable” had gone farther 
and fared considerably worse. Sizable patches of 
hair and hide were replaced by raw abrasion at sev- 
eral exposed points, while the slide down the rock 
with the saddle beneath him appeared to have 
strained his powerful back. By good fortune oppor- 
tunity offered to replace him with a more dependable 
animal before the really serious work of the trip be- 
gan at the Columbia Icefleld. 

At a point near the head of the overflow lake we 
were finally able to venture out onto the flats without 
great risk of wetting the packs except as a conse- 
quence of untoward accident. For a mile we 


[ 106 ] 


.BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


splashed along through gradually shallowing water, 
finally to come out upon a stretch of muddy but 
unsubmerged meadows cut with many meandering 
channels of the river. Depth of water rather swift- 
ness was the menace here, but, by exploring carefully 
in advance with the saddle animals, serious trouble 
with the packs was avoided. 

Although we were little troubled with deep bog- 
ging of the horses after the increasing slope of the 
valley floor brought better drainage of the stretches 
subject to inundation, progress was still terribly tiring 
upon the heavily overloaded animals. Even the sol- 
idest of the glacial silt tended to form a vacuum cup 
under each hoof, the breaking of the suction of which 
demanded a physical effort probably greater than 
that of climbing a steep trail. For the first time 
since our departure the horses became so exhausted 
as to try lying down with their loads. As this al- 
ways slacked the lash-ropes, it usually proved easier 
to throw off the packs entirely before dragging the 
wearied animals again to their feet. And, that, of 
course, meant five or ten minutes delay for the whole 
train for every reslinging of a hitch. 

With no possible camping ground offered either by 
the steep mountain sides or the muddy flats, there was 
nothing to do but keep pushing on to where the rough, 


[107] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


sharply-sloping boulder-fan from a torrent draining 
a glacier to the south poured down to the Alexandra. 
It was a sodden, ding-dong struggle to the last foot, 
and the mauve shadows of coming night were bank- 
ing thickly below the wall of the imminent continen- 
tal divide before the last of the straggling horses 
scrambled up out of the mud to a solid footing of 
shale and gravel. 

There was no grass and little protection from the 
wind on the forbidding triangle of torrent-strewn 
rocks eroded from the southern valley wall, but with 
no other possible halting place available it was up to 
us to make the best of what we had. Fairly good 
forage was provided by swimming the unpacked 
horses across a back-channel of the river and turning 
them loose on the half-submerged flats beyond. 
Tepee- and tent-poles were found after extended 
and exhausting cruising of the scantily-timbered 
mountain-side. 

With no evidences of anyone ever having camped 
at this point before, “Soapy,” his interest in the 
lighter and finer things of life reviving as La Casse 
began to spread the supper dishes, announced that it 
was in order for us to give the site a name. Even 
the fumes of steaming coffee and frying ham could 
not quite obliterate the memories of that accursed 


[108] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


day of bangings and wallowings, and that, of course, 
made it impossible for us to take up the matter 
impartially and without passion. Of the several 
names proposed, only the one advanced by the gentle 
Harmon was entirely fit to print, and even that was 
not quite polite. 

It is wisely provided by the American and Cana- 
dian Goverments that official geographical nomen- 
clature shall be vested in boards sitting far away and 
long after the event of discovery. If the names 
applied to muddy rivers by the pioneers were per- 
petuated, the impression might well be fostered that 
every stream in question was a tributary of the Styx. 

Fording a side channel and crossing half a mile 
of overflowed flats after breaking camp the next 
morning, we skirted another delta of gravel to come 
out upon a stretch of valley of greatly increased 
declivity. The river was swifter and narrower here, 
with broad, hard gravel bars between the winding 
channels. It was really much less exhausting going 
than that of the previous day, but the horses, weak 
from overwork and underfeeding, had much trouble 
at the ever recurring fords. At the end of two miles 
all of them were straggling badly, with several per- 
sisting in lying down with their packs. 

It was at this untimely junction that there opened 


[109] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


up a magnificent vista of valley, closed at the far end 
by the sun-sparkling serracs of Alexandria Glacier 
running back to the snowy summit of the peak of the 
same name at the crest of the continental divide. 
The setting was an incomparable one for the series 
of fording shots which Harmon had been postponing 
until he found just the place he wanted for them. 

It would not have been so bad had the lay-out of 
the scenery been such as to permit of the crossings 
being made at the most favourable points in the reg- 
ular way. These were hard enough for the jaded 
horses at the best; when exigencies of lighting back- 
ground made it necessary for them to be put in and 
driven through at bends where deep, swift channels 
running under steep, abrupt cut-banks rendered it 
difficult to scramble out, the temptation to challenge 
the right of the movie to interfere with the regular 
routine of trail-work must have been a serious one 
for “Soapy” to withstand. 

Not a little worried for the last two days over the 
way in which the abnormally severe work was wear- 
ing down his horses before the trip was well started, 
it must have struck the old woodsman as a bit hard 
to have additional effort of the most arduous kind 
demanded of animals already near exhaustion. 
Harmon had faced the same sort of problem many 


[110] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


times in previous seasons, and, therefore, had had the 
foresight to explain it to the packers in advance. 
Thus forewarned, old “Soapy” gamely came through 
with the active and hearty codperation without 
which the desired shots could not have been made. 
This made it not any the less trying to have to see all- 
but-collapsed horses rolled against a log-jam and 
forced to do an extra hundred yards of swimming 
and floundering just below a broad, open, hard- 
bottomed ford. 

The horses carrying the cameras and photographic 
supplies were headed over at the safest crossings. 
The packs of most of the other animals came in for 
thorough soakings. ‘Two or three bed-rolls took in 
water, as did also the dried fruit and dehydrated 
vegetables. More brine and syrup streamed down 
the river from the salt and sugar sacks. All of which 
was of very little moment, however, when weighed 
against Harmon’s triumphant announcement that 
“the back-lighting across Alexandra shot like a mil- 
lion dollars.” 

- One of the longest and hardest fords of the day 
furnished an interesting and not altogether explicable 
instance of canine psychology. ‘The pack-train made 
the crossing without getting into serious difficulty 
but the hard, partly up-stream swim in swift, broken 


Ree, 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


water was almost too much for the dogs. The 
powerfully muscled “Buster” made it at his first at- 
tempt, but only by a hair. “Tip” failed by a good 
flve feet. 

Carried down a hundred yards and back to the 
side from which he had started, the little Indian 
mongrel promptly galloped up the bank and put in 
again at the exact point at which he had made his 
first start. Failure this time was by a wider margin. 
Twice more he repeated the attempt, each time with 
a wider chute of swirling water separating the point 
at which he began to lose ground from the striven-for 
bank. 

With tottering legs and lolling tongue, the game 
little beast dragged his tired body back out of the 
icy waters after his fourth failure. His strength 
was plainly nearly gone, but something inside of the 
funny flat-topped head was only beginning to come 
into action. It could not have been reason, for 
“Tip” had been too busy keeping his head above 
water to have time for any real thinking even had he 
been capable of it. Instinct, perhaps, is the more 
convenient word; but even that somewhat inclusive 
term does not quite satisfy. 

At any rate, without an instant’s pause—and just 
as I had resigned myself to recrossing and bringing 


Bees 


AATIVA GUVNOATISVO WOowd ‘(Ladd S6VI1) THAT “LW 


ung ‘uowsnyy uoskg fo ksajanoy) 












nal —e =" ea Se 





FONVLISIG AHL NI AGIAIG IVLINANILNOO FHL GNV YaIOVTIS VYANVXATV 
“"VUGNVXFIV FHL JO SLVIA AHL NO ‘ONIGUOA WOT GALSOVHXA ‘SASYOH WOVd ONILSAA 








BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


him back under my arm—“Tip” began loping up 
the bank again. Passing without pause or side- 
glance the point at which he had launched his four 
previous swims, he ran on a hundred yards to dis- 
appear in the timber of the mountain side beyond a 
bend. Recurrent flashes of brown fur between the 
trunks of the trees revealed him running on to where 
a gravelly beach marked the beginning of a ford so 
broad and shallow that half of it was passed by long 
bounds. 

Attribute it to “the unerring needle of animal in- 
stinct” if you will; but what, then, was that needle 
doing at the first four abortive swims? 

“Buster,” everything considered, impressed me as 
being quite the most intelligent animal of any kind I 
had ever had opportunity to study at close range. 
And “Tip” I have often thought of as one of the 
worst fools of a dog that ever came to my notice. 
Yet that confounded camp-robbing Indian mongrel 
revealed occasional flashes of intelligence, instinct, 
or what you will, which not only quite out-Bustered 
“Buster,” but even left the several human units of 
the party blinking blankly at each other with won- 
dering, uncomprehending eyes. One such instance 
occurred in connection with our discovery of the 
great spring feeding the cataract on Castleguard 


[113] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


River; another on the Athabaska Glacier. I will 
tell of both in their proper sequence. 

After making a total of not over four miles for the 
day, horses were unpacked and camp pitched at a 
beautiful and well-sheltered site a mile below the 
foot of the Alexandra Glacier. Several peaks of the 
lofty massif of Mount Lyell were visible to the south- 
ward, rising above a broken but very extensive ice- 
field. This great mer de glace, discovered by Dr. 
Hector of the Palisser Expedition in 1858, has a total 
area of nearly forty square miles. Until the dis- 
covery of the Columbia Icefield, forty years later, it 
was believed to be the largest in the Canadian 
Rockies. All five of the Lyell peaks are over 11,000 
feet in height, while the summit of Forbes, a short 
distance to the south, attains an altitude of 11,902 
feet. | 

Clambering over a low ridge with the movie outfit 
in search of a vantage from which to make a picture 
of the Alexandra Glacier, we stumbled upon a set 
of tepee-poles marking the site of a comparatively 
recent Indian camp. “Soapy” promptly announced 
that we were viewing the remains of an Indian’s 
“Honeymoon lodge,” going on to explain that it was 
purposely pitched at a distance from water in order 


[114] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


that the bride should have opportunity to show her 
quality as a worker at the outset. 

“Soapy,” opining that there was much to be said 
in favor of the Indian custom of not spoiling a bride 
by soft pampering, demanded point-blank my own 
views on the subject. 

I replied “Ugh!” this being as near as I could 
come in Cree to, ‘““That all depends upon the bride.” 
I can conceive of nothing less wise than committing’ 
oneself any further than that upon so delicate a 
subject, especially in print. 

Returning to camp just before dark, we found an- 
other outfit had arrived. It was that of Dr. Fowler, 
of New York, accompanied by his son and Dr. At- 
kins, of Banff. Bill Potts, “Soapy’s” partner, was 
head packer. With him as wrangler was an extra- 
ordinarily tall young American, aptly described by 
“Soapy” as being “as long as a lash-rope.” 

Dr. Fowler was a Canadian Rockies “pilgrim” of 
many years standing. He did no hunting or climb- 
ing but was very keen on color photography. He 
planned to follow our route to Castleguard Valley 
and the Columbia Icefield, back-tracking later to 
the North Fork of the Saskatchewan and going on to 
Jasper by the regular route over Nigel Pass. 


[115] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Having long heard of Bill Potts as one of the 
doughtiest of the big-game hunters of the Rockies, 
the present opportunity to get him and old “Soapy” 
together, matching yarn for yarn, was too good to be 
missed. Seeing the shadows of the two famous 
woodsmen bobbing together against the roof of the 
Potts cook-tent, I hied over hot-foot, hopeful of 
hearing at first-hand Bill’s story of the time he had 
swum the swollen Brazeau with a grizzly cub in his 
mouth after braining its mother with an ax. 

A low mutter of conversation became audible as I 
approached, with a steady clickety-clicking obligato 
running through it. Lifting the flap of the tent, I 
was just in time to hear “Soapy” assure Bill that 
“Frog” La Casse had “the darndest slickest receep” 
for a frosting for writing letters on “choklit cake” 
that anyone had ever heard tell of. And the 
clickety-clicking was from two hard-plied pairs of 
knitting-needles! 

When “Soapy” resumed the rhasphody interrupted 
by my entrance, it was to offer to trade Potts ‘““The 
Frog’s” frosting “receep” in return for instruction 
in the esoteric intricacies of the new “hook-stitch.” 
Those two hard-boiled, hard-bitten old bear-killers 
had actually settled down to spend the evening knit- 
ting bedroom slippers and swapping cooking recipes! 


[116] 


BUCKING MUD AND FLOOD 


Potts explained to me about the knitting presently. 
He had taken to it to kill time during a dreary two 
years in a German prison-camp, subsequently passing 
on the accomplishment to “Soapy” while they hiber- 
nated through the long winters at their Morley ranch. 
But I never did get the proper version of that cub- 
in-the-mouth swimming episode. 


[7] 


CHAPTER VI 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


THE night of August 28th, spent in the camp be- 
low Alexandra Glacier, brought a distinct change 
of weather. There had been no rain or snow for a 
week, the first part of that period having been warm 
and humid, the rest hot and clear. Now it had 
turned sharp and cold, with a lowering pall of grey 
clouds threatening a heavy storm. 

The promised diversion was a welcome one, pro- 
vided only that it did not last too long. Forest fires 
are smouldering all through the summer in the Cana- 
dian Rockies, never being more than partially 
quenched by the rains. This means that a few days 
of weather without moisture in one form or another 
inevitably results in that bane of the scenic photogra- 
pher—smoke. 

Only the smoke-clouds from a near-by fire, or the 
dense blanket of a general conflagration, seriously 
interfere with close-range work, like trail-and 
camp-shots. But for strictly scenic work, where fifty 
miles of air may intervene between the camera and a 
line of peaks which must have a diamond-clear sky- 


[118] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


line to shoot successfully, the barely perceptible 
haziness due to fires five hundred miles or more away 
makes photographic effort quite futile. 

The low but steadily rising and thickening bank 
of murkiness we had noticed beyond the continental 
divide for two or three days was caused, as we 
learned later from the papers, by forest-fires along 
the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. Harmon was 
already worrying about it, saying that westerly 
mountain shots from Castleguard and the Columbia 
Icefield would be quite out of the question until 
there was a clearing of the air in that direction. <As 
this desideratum could only be consummated as the 
consequence of a general rain or snow, there was 
less threat than promise to us in the gathering storm. 
We would have preferred to have its breaking post- 
poned until Castleguard was reached and camp 
made, but were not going to complain about anything 
calculated to dampen down the rising smoke menace 
however soon or in whatever form it came. 

With a report current that there was only one set 
of tepee-poles available from the snow-and wind- 
stunted timber of lofty Castleguard Valley, there 
arose a good-natured rivalry between our own and 
the Potts outfit as to which should be on the ground 
first to take possession. Since it was practically out 


[119] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


of the question for one pack-train to pass another on 
the way, the prize appeared likely to fall to the 
party making the earlier start. 

The rival wranglers were out before daybreak, 
searching for horses which had scattered far and 
wide through the timber in their hunt for grass. 
For a while Potts’ men had all the best of the luck; 
in fact, his outfit was but two horses short before 
Baptie had brought down a scant half dozen of our 
own. But it was that far-strayed pair which 
decided the issue in the end. ‘They were still miss- 
ing when all sixteen of “Soapy’s”’ had been packed 
and were ready to take the trail. 

Following a night in really good grass, the horses 
were stronger than at any time since pushing on from 
the forks of the Saskatchewan. ‘This was a fortunate 
circumstance in view of the fact that our climb to 
the level of the Columbia Icefield—all of which we 
were endeavouring to make in one stage—promised 
to be an arduous one. Few things are more trying 
than having to force on a pack-horse that—in 
‘“Soapy’s” picturesque parlance—has no “fuel under 
its boilers.” 

A mile and half over a densely timbered ridge 
brought us down to the main or north fork of the 
Alexandra, usually called the Castleguard. ‘Tum- 


[120] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


bling through a half-canyoned valley, its slope was 
such that gravel and mud had been carried down to 
the flats we had traversed the previous day, leaving 
only a channel choked with boulders, many of which 
were in a State of very unstable equilibrium. 
Torrential water swirling over boulders makes 
for fording conditions almost if not quite prohibitive. 
A horse can break his leg in the wink of an eye in 
such a place, while footing once lost may be quite im- 
possible to regain. We took every possible precau- 
tion in the two crossings we had to make and felt 
ourselves very fortunate that nothing worse than wet 
packs resulted. Several of the horses were carried 
down a hundred feet or more at both fords, but 
luckily found sloping bars upon which to clamber 
out. These, with two or three crossings of the 
Sunwapta and Athabaska on the Arctic side of the 
divide, were the most dangerous fords we had. 

We were now practically at the fountainhead of 
one of the main sources of the Saskatchewan, and in 
a region peculiarly favourable to showing how the 
great volume of flow we had remarked below gath- 
ered in so comparatively short a distance. We were 
under the very drip of the eaves of the continental 
roof-tree. ‘To the east was the rocky summit of 
Mount Saskatchewan. ‘To the south the peaks of the 


[121] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Lyell massif glittered in solid, unbroken white. To 
the west, almost directly above us, Alexandra, 
Spring-Rice and Bryce towered half way to the 
zenith. To the north were Athabaska, the Twins 
and Columbia, but cut off from our vision at the 
moment by the more imminent loom of the southern 
bulwarks of the great Columbia Icefield. Most of 
these peaks were over 11,000 feet in height, two of 
them over 12,000. 

We had penetrated to the very heart of a kingdom 
of ice and snow, and on a day when all of it seemed 
to be melting. The glaciers spewed out raging tor- 
rents of savage power, and not the last, least finger 
of shadowed snow but gave forth its trickle of down- 
streaming water to swell the river in the valley. 
And besides the stream from melting ice and snow, 
both mountain-sides were streaked with rivulets 
from countless underground springs. 

Many of these subterranean flows were of great 
volume, notably one which fed a splendid waterfall 
immediately below where we left the Alexandra for 
the steep climb to Castleguard Valley. The stream 
from this fine cataract furnished more than half of 
the flow of the whole river, yet our subsequent ex- 
plorations revealed that all of it gushed out of the 


[122] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


mountain side not more than two hundred feet above 
the brink of the fall. 

I am inclined to think that 1500 second-feet would 
be an under- rather than over-estimate of the flow 
at the time of our visit. In my own experience, I 
can recall no spring to compare with it in volume, 
unless it be the one in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains 
which feeds the river flowing through Damascus, 
and which tradition claims sprang originally from a 
footprint of Abraham. 

The trail from the river to the Castleguard Val- 
ley was blazed by the Interprovincial Boundary 
surveyors and has been used several times since by 
mountain-climbing parties. Steep, slippery and 
dead-fall-choked though it was, the going was in- 
finitely preferable to the punishing grind in mud and 
water we had had since leaving the Saskatche- 
wan. 

And the valley itself—a thousand acres of moun- 
tain meadow surrounded on three sides by perpetual 
ice—was a near-paradise. 

Although at the verge of timber-line, stunted but 
close-growing fir and spruce provided wood, and 
shelter from the wind. A streamlet flowed past the 
cook-tent door, and knee-deep grass up the valley 


[123] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


promised a feast for our half-starved horses that 
would hold them from all desire to stray. 

Nothing but clouds and the smoke of our own 
camp-fire could cut us off from the pinnacles of 
Spring-Rice and Bryce, notching the skyline to the 
west, or the buttressed heights of Castleguard, lone 
sentinel of the Columbia Icefield to the north. A 
twenty-foot cascade on the river above the camp, and 
a hundred-foot sheer fall just below, were the crown- 
ing touches in a picture etched deep on the tablets 
of memory. 

We came across several deserted camps in Castle- 
guard Valley while scouting a site for our own, and 
in one of these—doubtless the last to be occupied— 
was the set of tepee-poles for which we had raced. 
After a single appraising glance at the pile of stubby 
sticks, “Soapy” announced that, since Bill Potts’ out- 
fit would probably come straggling in along toward 
dark after a late start, it would be only an act of 
common decency to leave a set of tepee-poles all 
ready for them. 

I was consumed with admiration for the brotherly 
act of the old woodsman, especially since it cost him 
and Baptie nearly a whole half-day of chopping and 
trimming to reduce a score of stunted, scragegly fir- 


[124] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


trunks—the smallest of them not less than a foot in 
diameter at the base—to proper tepee-supporting 
dimensions. 

My admiration grew and warmed as I watched 
those two self-sacrificing packers toiling down with 
their burdens all through the snow-flurries of the 
chill afternoon. But it died a sudden and violent 
death at supper when “Soapy,” waxing confidential 
over coffee, revealed the hidden motive behind its 
apparent generosity. He was badly in need of two 
strong pack-horses to replace the pair of trail-worn 
scrubs picked up at Lake Louise, and he wanted to 
coax Bill Potts into a humour to make the exchange. 
He reckoned that presentation bunch of tepee-poles 
ought just about to turn the trick. And even if it 
didn’t, why no great harm was done nohow. The 
geesly sticks were too short for our big tepee by all 
of five feet! 

It was highly reassuring to have a sly old fox like 
that working with heart and head in one’s interest. 
If you couldn’t admire old “Soapy” for one thing it 
was always very easy to admire him for another. 

There were three inches of snow on the ground by 
the time the tents were pitched and before dark a 
roaring storm was swooping down upon the valley 


[125] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


from the Columbia Icefield. Although sheltered on 
all sides by close-growing timber, the tepee had still 
to withstand some terrific onslaughts from the 
swirling wind-squalls. The almost cone-shaped 
poles—many of them weighing over a hundred 
pounds apiece—gave incomparable stability, but 
there was no way of shutting out wind. This was 
principally due to the fact that the savage gusts, 
caroming off now one side of the valley and now the 
other, never attacked twice from the same direction. 
That made it impossible to trim the flies so as to ex- 
clude more than one gust out of ten. And so the 
smoke from the fire—with sparks and occasionally 
very sizable fragments of glowing embers—were 
blown all over the inside of the tepee. 

Harmon, in his snug little “pup” tent, reported a 
very comfortable night; the four of us in the tepee 
were far from happy. “Soapy” and Ulus com- 
plained of twinges of ancient rheumatism, reawak- 
ened by the wettings of the last few days and the 
chilling of wind-fanned backs. Rob’s bed was set 
afire from sparks; also my own, the latter in dan- 
gerous proximity to the inflatable rubber mattress of 
my sleeping-bag. As a crowning touch, “Buster” 
and “Tip,” fighting over a coat to sleep upon, rolled 
into the fire and burned their feet, incidentally filling 


[126] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


the tepee with the odour of singed hair for the rest 
of the night. 

Six inches of snow on the ground in the morning, 
with icicles a foot and more long at the waterfalls, 
were renewed reminders of the shadow-line ever 
dividing summer from winter in the Canadian 
Rockies, even before the month of August is torn 
off the calendar. 

But the storm had functioned with a restraint be- 
yond all praise. It had spilled down just enough 
rain and snow effectually to put the smoke to sleep 
for several days, and then had stopped. The moun- 
tains were still too much obscured by clouds for 
scenic photography, but for waterfall and river shots 
the light was all that could be desired. 

Leaving “Soapy” to overhaul and patch pack-gear, 
Harmon, La Casse, Baptie and I set off to follow 
Castleguard Creek to the lower valley. Our maps 
were a bit obscure as to just how this affluent found 
its way to the river we had followed up from the 
Alexandra. We were especially anxious to know if 
it was the source of the water forming the superb 
fall at the point where we had started to climb the 
mountain. And if Castleguard Creek did not feed 
this fall, it was highly important for us to find out 
where it did come from. ‘Topography was such that 


[127] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


there simply had to be some striking, if not quite 


_ 


unique, movie shots where the water for that fine 
cataract tumbled down or gushed out of the 
mountain-side. 


Castleguard Creek, after meandering peacefully 


down the open valley for a couple of miles, began 
a sharp series of descents at a spreading cascade, 
twenty feet in height, not far above our camp. ‘Two 
hundred yards below there was an abrupt fall of a 
hundred feet, followed by a broken series of cascades 
which carried the stream down a gorge in what was 
an almost abrupt limestone cliff. 

The main fall above had possibilities for movie 
shots of enough promise to make it worth while wait- 
ing for a better lighting of the mountain back- 
grounds. | 

We had a difficult scramble down the spray-wet 
gorge through the cliff but found the several splen- 
did tumbles of water too much broken up for pic- 
tures. 

When the torrent turned off to the southward in 
a way that proved beyond doubt it was not a feeder 
of the great cataract below, we started working along 
the mountain side to the north. Since the trail we 
had followed with the horses had crossed no large 
stream, it seemed reasonable to believe that the one 


[128] 





Photo by L. R. Freeman 


WHERE A THOUSAND PER SECOND FEET OF WATER 
ISSUES FROM A MOUNTAINSIDE TO FALL TO THE FLOOR 
OF THE VALLEY OF THE ALEXANDRA 


& 
' 

% 

2 i 

22 

es 
{ 

s3 


Photo by L. R. Freeman 


THIS THREE HUNDRED FOOT FALLS, WITH A CONSTANT VOLUME 


OF POSSIBLY I,000 FEET PER SECOND, 
ISSUES FROM A CAVE IN THE MOUNTAINSIDE 


LESS THAN 200 FEET BELOW THE TOP 





IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


we sought must come down within a very short dis- 
tance of the point we had now reached. 

Stopped by an impassable gorge with a bare 
trickle of water in the bottom of it, we headed 
straight down the mountain side, hoping to come 
to the lower valley somewhere in the vicinity of the 
mysterious cataract. 

Several deer scared up in the woods were left — 
unmolested, the season not yet being open. A flock 
of spruce-fowl, however, offered fair game. Har- 
mon picked off three or four of these most utterly 
fearless of all wild birds with his “twenty-two” 
pistol. Baptie, with a real reputation as a hunter 
to sustain, disgraced himself by missing six shots 
with his “thirty-eight automatic” at less than ten 
feet. Fortunately, the obliging “fool hen,” with 
plumage no more than ruffled by the wind of that 
salvo of flying “‘soft-noses,” remained on its perch 
long enough for Ulus to sneak up from the rear and 
complete our mess of pottage by bringing it down 
with a stick. 

Shooting lapses—as well as birds—of that kind are 
hard to account for. It was the keen-eyed, agile 
Baptie who kept us in fresh meat all of the trip, 
both his marksmanship and strategy in bringing down 
goat and sheep proving of the highest order. But 


[129] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


he was never quite able to live down that altogether 
inexplicable slip-up of missing six shots at a bird 
that was almost roosting on the barrel of his pistol. 
From that day on the very croaking of a “fool-hen” 
among the distant trees would start a tell-tale blush 
surging up Rob’s shame-bowed neck. 

The roar of the big cataract lured us northward 
again as we descended, but only to meet another im- 
passable obstacle in a sheer-walled crack in the lime- 
stone. When we finally came down to the valley 
floor, it was to find ourselves just below the big fall, 
with its full discharge blocking the way to the gravel 
bar from which our return trail started. 

Fording this torrent was too much for one man 
alone, but we finally decided it could be effected by 
clasping hands and forming a human chain. This 
promised to leave at least one unit always with a 
comparatively solid footing, and so able to brace 
and steady the others through the deeper part of 
the channel. I had seen the thing done in Alaska 
some years previously. 

This precarious crossing, with the fall as a back- 
ground, looked like such good movie stuff that Har- 
mon decided to set up his camera and make a shot. 
We were bound to win whatever happened, he 


[130] 


ANOTY NVW ANO YOL ONOULS OOL SVM LNAYANO “SASYOH MOVd AAAOOAW OL LOOT NO VUAGNVXATV ONIGUOA 
fuvg ‘uomsny uostg fo Asajzanoy 


¥ 


soe 


Saget 


Pe 
aR 





fuvg ‘uowsy uostg fo 





f('sa4z4noy 


a1Od AadaL OL TVINAV 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


reasoned. If the chain went over unbroken, it was 
a good piece of fording; if it broke, on the other 
hand, and one or two got rolled, it was a good movie. 
What more could a man ask than a chance to play a 
sure-thing game like that? Thus Harmon. 

_ He had not exactly what one would call a scintil- 
lant wit, but was nevertheless often ready with quaint 
little quips like that which went far toward silvering 
dark dabs of the clouds overhanging our many 
leaden days. 

Unfortunately for the movie, my human chain 
functioned exactly as planned. ‘There was one in- 
spired moment when I, as anchor-man, was the only 
link firmly planted on the bottom. A relaxing of my 
wet fingers, a twitch of the wrist, and the sequel 
would have furnished a shot as “sure-fire” on the 
screen as a facial massage with a custard-pie. Nor 
did I miss the possibilities of the thing at what 
would have been the psychological moment. Not 
I. The possibilities were far too obvious to miss; 
besides, Ulus’ strained fingers were all but slipping 
from mine as it was. 

But—well, Rob’s temper was still rough and raw 
over the “‘fool-hen” fiasco, and it didn’t seem quite 
prudent to add what he might have construed as 


[131] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES. 


insult to so deep an injury. The tempers of pack- 
ers, pack-horses and prima donnas cannot be pinned 
down and charted like those of other beings. 

And then there was the circumstance of Ulus be- 
ing the cook of the expedition. There is an ancient 
law of the Medes and Persians which decrees that 
a man responsible for the killing or disabling of a 
camp cook shall take on the job himself. It was al- 
together improbable that a man would drown in the 
tumbling cascade below, but, with the stream com- 
posed of about equal parts of water, sand and rolled 
boulders, I am inclined to think that Lloyds would 
have quoted a high premium on a disablement policy. 

All in all, then, it is probably just as well that I 
went ahead and enacted my part of human anchor 
according to the original plan. But what a movie 
we missed |! 

Between the cataract, the swirling chute and the 
swaying of the human chain, the shot was full of 
lively action even as it was. When it was over we 
recrossed to ferry Harmon and the cameras. On 
the third crossing, with the movie no longer set up 
to record events, we missed the big spill by an eye- 
lash. The near-upset was caused by “Buster,” who, 
plunging in above, was carried down to lodge 
against Harmon’s legs. 


[132] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


With the photographer’s squat figure already in 
hair-poised balance as the fierce midstream current 
beat against it, a chip would have been enough to 
start it toppling. ‘‘Buster’s” floundering anatomy 
was more than a chip, and so Harmon lost his hold 
with both feet. That yanked down Baptie and half 
upset my own balance. The sturdy La Casse, for- 
tunately, was in shallower water and well braced. 
His firm hold gave me a chance to recover my foot- 
ing, after which it was not difficult to steady the 
fluttering of the outer end of the chain. A complete 
mess-up at this moment would have been a serious 
one, as the loss of at least the motion-picture was in- 
evitable. 

“Buster” was swept down two hundred feet—much 
of the distance under water—before pawing against 
a bar along which his stout legs carried him out. 
He was coughing water out of his lungs when he re- 
joined us, and acted rather after the manner of a 
dog which suspects that a trick has been played upon 
feeetrait a minute later ‘Tip’ breezed down’ the 
bar from above with a dry back and not a hair 
ruffled above the toes with which he had been spurn- 
ing the thin layer of snow still lying in the timber. 
He seemed mightily pleased with himself over some- 
thing, probably the fact that he had completely 


Bey 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES ~ 


avoided a crossing so rough as to have had even 
his strong-swimming mate in serious difficulties. 

The significance of “Tip’s” dry hide suddenly 
broke upon us. It meant that, unless he had crossed 
on a fallen tree or a natural bridge, the whole stream 
must come gushing out of the mountain within a 
very short distance of the brink of the fall. And 
that, as I have already told, was what a three-or four- 
hundred-foot climb revealed. Just what sort of a 
sixth sense apprized “Tip” of the way things were 
disposed remains as much of a puzzle to me as did the 
mainspring behind his action at the ford of the 
Alexandra. 

The stream was almost certainly an underground 
drainage from a part of the Columbia Icefield. 
From the fact that it appeared to vary but slightly 
in volume while the glacial streams on the surface 
were rising and falling greatly under the influence 
of the weather, it would seem probable that it came 
{rom a reservoir of great capacity. Subsequently 
we found many sinks in upper Castleguard Valley 
where the waters of melting snows disappeared into 
the earth. It is conceivable that much of the peren- 
nial glacial meltage goes underground in similar 
fashion. 

On the way back to camp La Casse led us to a 


[134] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


large limestone cave which had been discovered by 
a mountain-climbing party some years previously. 
It extended back several hundred feet into the moun- 
tain, while from its mouth ran a channel which 
gave evidences—in whorls of sand and back-laid 
blades of grass—of having recently carried a tor- 
rential flow of water. 

La Casse described how, when camped in Castle- 
guard Valley with the Torrington party in June of 
the previous year, they had been attracted to the cave 
by a tremendous roaring. ‘This thunderous sound 
broke forth without warning every afternoon at al- 
most exactly four o’clock, continuing far into the 
night. The following morning the channel was 
dry, remaining so until the flood came down again 
in the afternoon. Their theory was that, like the 
flow from the cave on the brink of the wall of the 
lower valley, this one was fed from the drainage 
of sinks under or near the main icefield. 

This upper cave was only a few hundred yards 
from our camp, which gave good opportunity to 
keep it under close observation. We were especially 
anxious to picture the Jove-like birth of the under- 
ground river; also to make a series of shots of its 
waters tumbling down a titanic limestone stairway 
immediately below. 


[135] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


These giant steps, as regularly and evenly set as 
the sides of the Cheops Pyramid, and at about the 
same general slope, were formed by the breaking 
back of the lofty cliff we had clambered down in 
following Castleguard Creek. It is probable, in- 
deed, that the gorge cut by this intermittently flow- 
ing river was the identical one which had turned us 
back in our search for the source of the great cataract 
below. 

In spite of repeated visits to the cave during the 
several days we remained in Castleguard Valley, we 
were never able to find it in flow. ‘This was a great 
disappointment, as the huge discharge of water tum- 
bling down those several hundred feet of evenly 
spaced stairs would have made a picture both unique 
and beautiful. 

The irregularity of flow of the river from this 
upper cave would seem to indicate that its waters 
had their source in snow meltage rather than in that 
from the glaciers. This would account for the fact 
that it was running in June—a time when the early 
summer thaw is at its height—and not in August, 
when most of the general snowfall is gone. 

Returning to camp in the early afternoon, I found 
my first opportunity to disentangle, clean and dry 
the pulpy bundle of wires, batteries, boxes and pack- 


[136] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


ing that was once a radio outfit. The cedar pack-box 
was badly split and dented from the terrific blows 
sustained from rocks and trees, but was still held 
together by its close-set brass screws and a double 
lashing of fishing-line. Its contents had gained 
rather than lost in volume since we had last tied 
it up on the trail from Bow Pass down to the 
Mistaya. Most of the accretion was due to the all- 
permeative glacial silt which, besides depositing it- 
self in a half-inch-deep layer at the bottom of the 
box, had smeared everything inside with thin, cling- 
ing blue mud. 

The little black box o’ tricks itself, with not a 
right-angle left, gave forth a noise like a child’s 
rattle from the screws, switches and various odds 
and ends of breakage shaking about inside. Once it 
was trued up and the knick-knacks restored to place, 
however, it was just about the same as ever, at least 
so far as looks were concerned. And looks were, 
of course, the only thing that mattered much now. 
We had long since given up hopes of using the 
bruised and battered bundle of junk as a radio re- 
ceiving set. 

The tubes, also (there were eight of them includ- 
ing four spares), appeared to be reduced to a condi- 
tion in which they were better adaptable to movie 


[137] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


than to radio use. While the outer glass of every 
one of them, protected by soft cotton wrappings in 
a fibre case, was unshattered, a tell-tale tinkle from 
the inside seemed to indicate something radically 
awry. 

It was just as Harmon was proposing setting up 
the tubes in a row for pistol practice that La Casse 
discovered a book of directions in the mud at the 
bottom of the pack-box. After restoring the first 
page to legibility by dabbing it in his dish-water, 
Ulus puzzled over it for a while before interposing 
with a request that we defer our target practice long 
enough to give him a fair chance to bring back the 
radio to life. He had discovered a diagram show- 
ing the proper hook-up of the box and batteries, he 
said, and we already had special directions for 
stringing the aerial. If by any chance the tubes and 
the batteries still retained their life, who could say 
that we should not be bringing the outside world to 
our tepee door inside of an hour? 

As it is always good policy to humour a camp cook, 
we let the optimistic Ulus have his way. Genius 
that is denied opportunity for outward bloom often 
strikes inward. With two months of hard work still 
ahead it was not well to have anything rankling in 


[138] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


the mind of any member of the party, least of all 
in that of the cook. 

The batteries spat forth strong, vital sparks when 
we began connecting them up, but the real surprise 
came when each of the tubes, tried out one after 
the other, responded with a bright red glow to the 
circulation of the current. There was no possible 
question of their being very much alive and ready 
to play their part of the game. Just what was the 
loose hardware clinking around inside of them we 
never did learn. Probably it was only a fragment 
of glass from the collar at the base of the filament. 
Certainly, in any event, it was a part of no essential 
connection. 

The aerial, by dint of rough climbing and some 
very clever lasso-like casting of the loops of the in- 
sulated wire, was finally strung between a ledge of 
rocks and the last scraggly pine at the edge of timber- 
line. A jiggering of the dials and switches along 
toward the end of the afternoon seemed to reveal 
restless stirrings of the ether, but not all our cunning 
could resolve it into anything more coherent than 
clangs and howls. 

Further study of the book seemed to point to the 
various units of our wiring system as the probable 


[139] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


seat of trouble. The receiving set had been con- 
nected to the north rather than to the south end of 
the antenna, while a loose double bow-knot of in- 
sulated wire could hardly have been expected to give 
as satisfactory an outlet for the lead as the soldered 
joint recommended by the book. 

All the noises of a busy, booming world seemed to 
be lying in wait to swoop down upon our quiet 
Alpine. valley when reconditioning was complete 
and we put on the head-phones and started worry- 
ing the dials again. With many stations appearing 
to be crowding, like a line at a ticket-window, wait- 
ing to be the first to get to us, and with scant cunning 
of hand or ear in the matter of tuning-in or tuning- 
out, it was slow work reducing the chaos to a sem- 
blance of order and making the clamoring voices 
take their turn. 

The long northern twilight was over and darkness 
descending upon the ice-bound valley before a 
plaintive ballad, in a voice like the wail of a soprano 
coyote, was heard announced as being broadcast by 
an Oklahoma City station “for the benefit of the 
auto-campers.” The song was “Carry me Back to 
Ol’ Virginny,” which seemed a bit inappropriate 
considering the fact that most of the auto-campers 
must have come from west of the Mississippi. 


[140] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


The next turn of the dial brought an unpleasant 
shock. I tuned into a thunderous roar, like the 
clamouring of hungry lions at feeding-time or the 
howling of the stage-trained Roman mob in the 
pauses of Marc Antony’s oration over the body of 
Cesar. ‘Then there was silence, quickly cut into 
by a strident voice shouting, “The great Amerikun 
peepul will never stand for being thus strangled by 
a tyrant!” 

It was the open season for politicians, of course, 
and this must have been one of the La Follette 
minions calling to his mates, or, rather, his dupes. 
No South Sea schooner skipper avoiding an im- 
minent coral reef ever threw his wheel harder over 
than did I the radio dial in my haste to put a thou- 
sand miles of pure ether between our uncontaminated 
valley and that howling demagogue. 

We kept tuning in on these pestiferous harangues 
all the rest of the trip—but they were gone at 
the twist of a thumb. It is no end of a pity that 
the primal founts themselves cannot be stilled in the 
same manner. A twist of the thumb, properly ap- 
plied, really goes quite a ways toward quieting the 
bobbings of a wind-fanned Adam’s apple. 

Following directions still more carefully in re- 
stringing the aerial the next day, we were rewarded 


[141] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


by picking up Calgary, with a score of stations 
scattered between Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, 
shortly after it was dark at eight-thirty. This highly 
interesting concert was brought to a sudden end, in 
the middle of a tenor solo broadcast from CKCD, 
Vancouver, when a brief but violent squall from 
the icefields broke off short the limb of the dead 
tree to the which the antenna was attached. 

The next day we changed the set-up so that the 
lead ran down into the tepee and we could listen-in 
from the comparative comfort of seats on our bed- 
rolls and with the light and warmth of a crack- 
ling pitch-pine fire. And here it was, for the final 
two months of the expedition in the Rockies, that 
the world came to visit us almost every night 
through the medium of the little black box which 
we had come so near to throwing into complete dis- 
card. 

Without giving the lengthy list of stations which 
we had at one time or another, I may say that these 
included a majority of the high-power ones east of 
the Mississippi, others as far south as Baton Rouge, 
high and medium-power stations in California, and 
practically every station in the Pacific Northwest, 
British Columbia and Alberta. 


[142] 


IN CAMP AT CASTLEGUARD 


The high-lights of the radio adventure I will 
touch upon as they developed. From Castleguard 
on it was one of the most enchanting features of the 
trip. 


[143] 


CHAPTER VII 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


THE main piece of work planned to be done from 
our camp at the edge of the Columbia Icefield was 
the filming of the panorama from the summit of 
Castleguard. This striking peak, although but little 
over 10,000 feet in height, is so located as to offer a 
vantage quite unique for viewing or photographing 
the great Columbia mer de glace, with the stupendous 
walls of lofty mountains surrounding it. 

We were anxious for at least two hours on the 
summit during which there would be not only local 
sunshine, but a clear skyline of peaks in every 
direction. Such an ideal day might occur not over 
once or twice in a summer, but we were prepared to 
wait for the nearest possible approximation to it. 

The sudden break-up of the humid Chinook spell, 
followed by a short but violent snowstorm of almost 
blizzard magnitude the day of our arrival, seemed to 
point to a long, tedious wait. Then another kaleido- 
scopic shift brought just the day we were looking for, 
or at least a morning which promised to develop into 
such a day. 

[144] 





Photo by L. R. Freeman 


AVOIDING A CREVASSE ON THE CLIMB TO MT. CASTLEGUARD 


fiuvg ‘uomsvpyy uostg fo Xsajanoy 


(Laaa S49‘1r) NIML HLNOS SI “ATaIAAOI VIAINNTOO SSOUOV “LHOIY NO MVdd HOIH 
‘(Ldad 96001) GUVNOATISVO AO LINWOS NO ALUVd 








THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


As practically the whole 3,coo feet of climbing 
was Over ice or snow, there was no chance to use the 
horses. 

For a real mountain climbing party the ascent of 
Castleguard is comparatively easy. Harmon and 
La Casse were fairly experienced climbers, but the 
packers and I were novices. Added to this, was the 
fact that we divided between the five of us—what 
with the heavy movie camera and tripod, four still 
cameras and much incidental impedimenta—an av- 
erage of possibly two or three times the weight or- 
dinarily carried by the alpinist. 

And so we made a hard tiring pull of it, with 
many halts interspersed to regain breath and to mas- 
sage incipient cramps out of knotting muscles. The 
last thousand feet was the steepest, steps having to 
be cut with an ice-ax for most of the distance. 
Personally, I was extremely glad of the sustaining 
pressure of a rope during the precarious clamber up 
a “chimney” just below the summit. 

Possibly lacking the sheer breath-taking wonder 
of the first sight of Kinchinjunga’s snows from Dar- 
jeeling, the view from the summit of Castleguard is 
still one of the great mountain panoramas of the 
world. Set on the southern rim of the Columbia 
Icefield, with no other peak encroaching on its do- 


[145] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


main for many miles, there are no masking barriers 
close at hand to cut off the view in any direction. 

Not only are almost all of the great peaks of the 
Canadian Rockies system notched into the splendid 
panorama, but also many of those of the Selkirks 
and the Gold Range, far beyond the purple- 
shadowed depths that mark the great gorge of the 
Columbia River. 

The first white-man to see the Columbia Icefield 
was J. Norman Collie, in 1898, who wrote the fol- 
lowing interesting description of the panorama un- 
folding from the summit of Mt. Athabaska: 


‘‘A new world was spread at our feet; to the west- 
ward stretched a vast icefield probably never before 
seen by human eye, and surrounded by entirely un- 
known, unnamed and unclimbed peaks. From its 
vast expanse of snow the Saskatchewan Glacier takes 
its rise, and it also supplies the head waters of the. 
Athabaska; while far away to the west, bending 
over in those unknown valleys glowing with the 
evening light, the level snows stretched to finally 
melt and flow down more than one channel into the 
Columbia River, and thence to the Pacific Ocean. 
Beyond the Saskatchewan Glacier to the southeast 
a huge peak (which we have named Saskatchewan) 
lay between this glacier and the west branch of the 


[146] 








Photo by L. R. Freeman 


WRANGLER BOB BAPTIE DOING HIS STUFF 
ON A CLIFF OF CASTLEGUARD, 
2,000 FEET ABOVE COLUMBIA ICEFIELD 


upumaIig “yy “7 Lg 010Yg 


qaIs 90d NO OIdVuY ONIMOVd 





THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


North-Fork, flat-topped and covered with snow, on 
its eastern face a precipitous wall of rock. Mt. 
Lyell and Mt. Forbes could be seen far off in the 
haze. But it was to the west and northwest that 
the chief interest lay. From this great snow field 
rose solemnly, like ‘lonely sea-stacks in mid-ocean,’ 
two magnificent peaks which we imagined to be 
13,c00 to 14,000 feet high, keeping guard over those 
unknown western fields of ice. One of these, which 
reminded us of the Finsteraarhorn, we have ventured 
to name after the Right Hon. James Bryce, the then 
President of the Alpine Club. A little to the north 
of this peak, and directly westward of the peak Ath- 
abaska, rose probably the highest summit in this 
region of the Rocky Mountains. Chisel-shaped at 
the head, covered with glaciers and snow, it stood 
alone, and I at once recognized the great peak I was 
in search of; moreover, a short distance to the north- 
east of this mountain, another, almost as high, also 
flat-topped, but ringed around with sheer precipices, 
reared its head into the sky above all its fellows. .. . 
At once I concluded that these might be the two lost 
mountains, Brown and Hooker.” 


Bryce is still the dominating peak in the panorama 
unfolding from most of the Columbia Icefield, but 
its ascertained height of 11,507 feet falls consider- 
ably short of Collie’s estimate. ‘The two high north- 


[147] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


ern peaks, supposed to be Brown and Hooker, were 
those since named respectively Columbia and 
Alberta. 

Columbia, with an altitude of 12,294 feet, is in- 
deed the highest mountain in this region of the 
Rockies, and ranks second only to Robson in the 
whole system. Seen from anywhere to the south, 
however, it appears a comparatively insignificant 
peak, probably due to the foreshortening of the long 
slope up from the great icefield. This rounded hum- 
mock of snow can hardly be recognized as the slender 
Matterhorn-like pinnacle we were later at such 
trouble to photograph from the head of the Atha- 
baska. 

Presenting even more contrasted views as seen 
from the south and north is the Snow Dome. Al- 
though the altitude of this remarkable eminence is 
11,340 feet, the slope to its summit from the Columbia 
Icefield looks gradual and smooth enough to be 
navigated by an automobile. Yet the northeast side 
of the mountain is an almost sheer cliff of 5,000 feet 
to the upper flats of the Sunwapta. 

It is the Snow Dome which forms the hydro- 
graphic apex of the drainage of the Columbia, Atha- 
baska and Saskatchewan. 


[148] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


The deep purple-indigo dome of the sky looked 
clear enough to last a week as we struggled up to the 
top of Castleguard, but Harmon was too sapient of 
Rocky Mountain summer weather to presume upon 
momentary fairness. Casting his eye rather to where 
a vaporous boil of dark clouds was beginning to 
surge against the barriers above the gorge of the 
Columbia, he set up his cameras and began cranking 
off film at feverish haste. 

Two complete panoramas were made, as described 
in the chapter on scenic work. One was shot with, 
one without, a filter on the lens. The panoramas 
were followed by shots with the telephoto at indi- 
vidual peaks, and “slow-turn” exposures on the 
progress of the gathering clouds across the face of 
Bryce. A round of shots with the various still 
cameras gave us everything we came for, and under 
almost perfect conditions of light and air. 

We finished in nick of time. Before the cameras 
were packed up the vanguard of the mists were 
pushing up the slopes from the west, to come swarm- 
ing over the top as the last man took his place on the 
rope and we started to descend. 

Going down, as is usually the case with a novice, 
I found rather more trying than climbing up. There 


[149] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


were two or three times, when my dangling heels 
refused to find holds in the ‘‘chimney,” that the rope 
was more than an ornament. 

Hardly had we kicked free the rope as the foot of 
the steepest pitch was reached, than La Casse, lop- 
ing on ahead with the dogs over apparently unbroken 
snow, dropped completely out of sight. He reap- 
peared an instant later, having caught one foot on a 
ledge just under the brink of the crevasse. 

The latter, thinly but completely bridged by 
the drift from the late snowfall, was of great depth, 
smooth green walls disappearing from sight far 
below the length of our rope. 

In the interesting record published by Dr. J. 
Monroe Thorington, F.R.G.S. of his ascents of a 
number of mountains of the Columbia Icefield in 
1923, I find this sentence concluding the account of 
the return from Castleguard: 


“Tt was a day of enjoyment for all, although the 
disappearance of our cook in a small crevasse fright- 
ened us badly.” 

By an interesting coincidence, it was not only the 
same cook who broke through into a crevasse, but 
almost certainly the same crevasse that was fallen 
into. As old “Soapy’ commented: “Seems like 


[150] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


there was two things cooks was most always pretty 
near losing—their tempers and their hides.” 

As a matter of fact, La Casse was not only ex- 
tremely good-tempered—away from the cook-pots 
and the smoke of bacon grease—but also probably 
the best mountain man in the party. 

Practically all of the important peaks surround- 
ing the Columbia Icefield have been climbed, though 
two or three of the highest of them were only con- 
quered during the summers of 1923 and 1924. The 
most notable climbing work in this region was un- 
doubtedly done by the Torrington expedition in the 
former year. Besides several minor climbs and trav- 
erses, first ascents were made of the North Twin 
and Saskatchewan, a second ascent of Columbia and 
a third ascent of Athabaska. | 

The North Twin is 12,085 feet in height, the only 
loftier peaks in the Canadian Rockies being Robson 
and Columbia. Torrington’s account of the initial 
ascent is a classic of modesty and brevity. 

“Tt is a simple story,” he writes in the Alpine 
Journal. “We saw our peak, walked toward it, 
up it, and back again. There was only the dis- 
farice.”’ 

That comprehensive second sentence has almost 


[15st] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


the succinctness of Cesar’s famous “Vent, vid1, v1c1,” 
without the latter’s offensive bombast. 

A hint of the effort involved in this fine ascent is 
revealed in the concluding paragraph of Dr. Tor- 
rington’s notes. 


“No one who does not follow in our tracks will 
quite understand that journey back across the endless 
icefield. The exhausting first half-hour in a little 
blizzard, obscuring the trail twenty feet ahead; 
clearing, with a crimson, gold, and orange sunset 
banded against lead-blue storm-clouds behind The 
Twins; the unearthly light in the snow-banners and 
mist above Columbia; the soft, rosy haze filtering 
into the distant Selkirks, lifting them up and making 
them unreal. 

‘We were too tired to appreciate it, plodding on 
and on, in deep, insufficiently crusted snow, over 
plateau and ridge and dip, until darkness came. 
The field is so huge. In one corner the stars were 
out; in another, beyond Mt. Athabaska, dark clouds 
hung and lightning flashed. We lit our lantern and 
went on through the night, pulling into camp at last, 
with morning light upon the hills as it had been 
twenty-three hours before when we departed.” * 


The two days following our ascent of Castleguard 
were spent in preparing for what seemed likely to 
prove the roughest traverse of the trip—the cross- 


1 Alpine Journal, Number 227. 


[152] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


ing of the long easterly tentacle of the Columbia Ice- 
field known as the Saskatchewan Glacier. Prepa- 
rations consisted not only of putting pack-gear and 
the general outfit in as good a condition as possible, 
but also of a day of advance exploration on the 
glacier. 

With supplies materially reduced by both con- 
sumption and attrition, the packs were going to be 
much lighter than at the outset. ‘This, and the fact 
that the condition of the horses was improved greatly 
by a week of rest and grazing in the mountain mead- 
OWs, was a point in our favour. MHeartening, also, 
was the certainty that there was to be no timber to 
knock off the packs and no mud to bog down the 
horses. Our worst troubles would come from the 
ice and rocks, and of these there was not much that - 
could be learned in advance. 

The protection of the providentially-restored radio 
was now one of our chief concerns. Fearing fur- 
ther serious smashings, or possibly total loss, if a 
pack-horse stumbled into a crevasse on the glacial 
traverse, La Casse spent his spare hours fashioning 
a rude sledge on which the precious box was to be 
lashed and drawn by man or dog-power across the 
stretches most dangerous to the horses. ‘The plan 
seemed perfect as we discussed it in theory; in prac- 


[153] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


tice it developed serious defects. Fortunately, we 
were able to give it a preliminary test. 

The sledge proved easy enough for a man to draw 
over ice or snow on the level, or even up a consider- 
able slope. On a side-pitch, however, one or two 
extra men were necessary to keep the top-heavy load 
from upsetting. As it seemed certain that all hands 
would be needed to manage the horses once we were 
out on the glacier, a full sled-crew was out of the 
question. 

“Buster,” with a couple of seasons’ experience in 
the Banff dog-races, snaked the loaded sledge across 
the ice without effort. A man or two at the side to 
prevent upsets still proved necessary, however, and 
with no extra men likely to be available we were 
forced reluctantly to abandon the whole idea of 
sledge transport for the radio. 

Unluckily, we neglected to unharness “Buster” 
when the trials were over. That was how both 
sledge and radio formed a comet-like wake astern of 
a flying husky that started off full-tilt at the chal- 
lenging chirrup of a rock-rabbit. In spite of the 
hundred-pound drag, “‘Buster’s” tigerish spring actu- 
ally carried him all the way across the small crevasse 
suddenly intervening between him and his quarry. 
Sledge and radio, of course, plumped right into the 


[154] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


hole in the ice, taking with them a very surprised 
and frightened dog. By good fortune it was a very 
shallow crevasse, and so we were able to fish “Bus- 
ter” and his burden out of the bottle-green depths 
with the aid of an alpenstock. 

Our purpose in traversing the length of the Sas- 
katchewan Glacier with the pack-train was two-fold. 
On the one hand, that route would save from forty to 
fifty miles of flooded flats in getting around to the 
north side of the Columbia Icefield; on the other, it 
would give us a far more intimate glimpse of the 
great icefield itself. 

Heavy as the possible penalty of failure might be, 
the chance was deemed worth taking on either score. 
We were the more sanguine of success from the fact 
that this same route had been traversed the previous 
year by the Thorington party. 

La Casse, who had been along on this initial ven- 
ture, which was undertaken in June, thought that we 
would find conditions less difficult in September. 
This was on the perfectly sound theory that, with 
most of the winter’s snow gone at the later date, there 
would be firmer footing on the solid ice of the gla- 
cier, with less chance of stumbling into thinly covered 
crevasses. Like the radio sled, this was good theory 
but failed of vindication in practice. 


[155] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Just as the most serious problem of a man jumping 
out of a balloon is that of landing, so that of the 
glacial traverse was getting off over the lower end. 
La Casse had warned us of this, and a day’s advance 
scouting on foot had proved the warning in good 
point. It was going to be rough getting onto the 
glacier, and still rougher travelling across and down 
it; but the very worst that seemed likely to happen 
at the snout was that the horses might have to be 
thrown and let down on their sides by ropes. 

These observations, with the deductions drawn 
therefrom, were all right as far as they went. ‘The 
trouble was that the preliminary scoutings were not 
carried quite far enough to reveal that rockslides 
had filled or carried away a short but very important 
bit of mountain side traversed by the previous party 
in reaching the flats below the glacier. This we 
were not to learn until the bridges had been burned 
behind us by sliding the horses down a slope of ice 
up which they could not be taken back. What fol- 
lowed is not pleasant even to write about four months 
later. 

Anticipating difficulties on the ice, we had broken 
camp and started off up the valley at a very early 
hour on the morning of September 6th. An hour 
and a half of steady climbing took us over the divide 


[156] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


at an elevation of about a thousand feet above timber- 
line. A mile almost on a level, with a slight descent 
at the end, brought us out by the side of a beautiful 
little ice-walled lake at the side of the glacier. 

What appeared to be the easiest point to reach the 
ice—a rounded depression at the foot of the lake— 
had been proved impracticable because of a broad 
swath of unfathomable glacial mud. 

The only approach was across the broken rock 
ridges above the head of the lake, where we had al- 
ready found evidences of the passage of the previous 
party. It was terribly rough going here, especially 
where the ice and rock were mixed in a vile conglom- 
erate; but the pack-train was worked across without 
serious trouble. 

At the edge of the ice the horses were tied head-to- 
tail in bunches of three or four, each unit to be led 
by a man on foot. This was to give more complete 
control and especially to prevent straying when out 
among the open crevasses. 

La Casse with one bunch took the lead, Baptie, 
“Soapy” and I following with the other three. Har- 
mon, leading only the movie horse, scouted on a rov- 
ing commission after pictures. 

The horses, although in fine fettle after five days’ 
feasting among the juicy mountain meadow grasses, 


[157] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


took the work seriously and showed little desire to 
bolt or hang back. Plainly the strangeness of their 
surroundings and the unstability of their footings had 
a sobering effect. 

The day was even more nearly perfect for photo- 
graphic work than that on which we had ascended 
Castleguard. There was a clear vault of indigo sky 
overhead, with the west banked full of rolling cumu- 
lus clouds which gave all the effect of an approach- 
ing storm with nothing of the threat. 

The rims of the hanging glaciers high up on the 
mountains to the left and right were scintillant with . 
reflected sunlight while on all sides of us the broken 
surface of the icefield threw tremulous shadows like 
those of the waves of a rough choppy sea. 

The pictorial possibilities of the traverse so smote 
upon the artistic spirit of Harmon as to leave him 
for the moment gasping like a child set down in a 
candy shop and told to help himself. 

Winding and twisting, doubling and turning, La 
Casse slowly worked the pack-train out toward the 
great lateral moraine which stretched down the mid- 
dle of the glacier like a half-completed railway 
embankment. 

We had already observed that, while the horizon- 


[158] 


YUAIOVTIO NVMAHOLVASVS NO SASSVAYAO MOTIVHS SSOYOV ONIOD HONOY 


ffuvg ‘uomsiy uostg fo KsajAnog 





UAIOVID NVMAHOLVUSVS JO HLONAT AHL ONISUAAVUL ATIHM SUAIOVID ACIS ONISSVd 


fiuvg ‘uowmsnpyy uorstg fo ksajano) 


Tayi 2 ike 





THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


tal going was rougher along the edge of this dragon- 
back of up-pushed rock, the chances of perpendicu- 
lar descent into a crevasse was rather less than along 
the sides of the glacier. 

Repeatedly turned: back by yawning cracks open- 
ing beyond eyescope into the blue-green depths of 
the ice, there was none long enough to block the way 
completely. Such chances as there were of breaking 
through, La Casse took by going ahead. 

Indescribably rough and slippery as was the sur- 
face of the ice, it proved unexpectedly firm under- 
foot. A horse had its tail or neck sharply stretched 
now and then, as its mate immediately astern or 
ahead went down and wallowed at the end of the 
binding halters. The casualties to packs, however, 
were rather less than when working through the mud 
or in the timber. 

The abysmal groans of cracking ice were a bit 
nerve-racking to the novice at first, but one steadied 
to them in time when they failed to make good their 
threats of opening up the glacier under his very 
feet. | 

Doing two or three miles of windings for every 
one of progress toward the foot of the glacier, the 
hours slipped swiftly by. We were still a mile from 


[159] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


the point where the end of the ice-wall of the snout 
broke down to the flats of the Saskatchewan when a 
deepening and widening of the crevasses ahead 
warned that it was time to get the pack-train off onto 
the rocky mountain side to the north. 

The only place where it appeared this could be 
accomplished successfully was a narrow tongue of 
ice and gravel, running down to the native rock be- 
tween two very deep crevasses. The “runway,” with 
the ice breaking sharply off on either side, was about 
twenty feet; the distance down to the rock perhaps 
eighty. 

With the slope far too smooth and steep to give 
hoof-hold, the only really safe way of getting down 
would have been to unpack the horses, throw them, 
tie their feet, and lower them on their sides by ropes. 
An animal was bound to go down somehow, of 
course, once he was started. ‘The danger was that, 
floundering in his fright, he might get into one of 
the crevasses. 

With not nearly enough time to resort to the safety- 
first method, nothing remained but to do the best we 
could with the only other alternative. ‘This con- 
sisted of the simple procedure of leading each horse 
to the edge, starting him down, head-first, by a rope 

[ 160] 


YaAIOVID NVMAHOLVASVS 40 HLOOW OL AGIAIG WoOwd ‘(Ladd 96‘01) NVMAHOLVASVS “LW 


ffuvg ‘uowsvpy uorskg fo <saqanoy 








Photo by L. R. Freeman 


WHITE WATER IN THE BOX CANYON OF NORTH FORK 
OF SASKATCHEWAN 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


pulled from below, and trusting to instinct to keep 
his centre of gravity low by sitting on his haunches 
-and sliding rather than trying to flounder to a 
footing. 

This succeeded even beyond our hopes. Though 
all of the horses did not have the sense to slide, the 
three or four that invited rolling by trying to gain 
their feet kept right on going in a straight line, reach- 
ing the bottom unhurt. 

With a faint trail streaking the rocky mountain 
wall where the pack-train of the previous year’s 
traverse had picked its way it now seemed that the 
worst was over. Telling ourselves that another hour 
at the outside would bring us to a camp in the flats 
below the snout, we took our time in relashing packs 
for the rough clamber down along the side of the 
glacier. The mauve shadows of coming night were 
piling thick in the ice-filled valley by the time we 
were ready to push on. 

A quarter-mile of increasingly difficult going 
brought the head of the pack-train to the point I 
have mentioned where a breaking away of the moun- 
tain side above had choked the way with a slide of 
broken rock, extending as far ahead as one could see. 
This seemed so completely out of the question to 


[161] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


cross that we turned to the glacier again in the hope 
that the ice could be followed at least far enough to 
get below the rocky barrier. 

A way to the glacier over the easy slope of a drift 
of old snow lent momentary encouragement, only to 
make the disappointment the keener when we found 
ourselves on a patch of ice, hardly a hundred yards 
in diameter, which was completely encircled by a 
connecting series of impassable crevasses. 

With no way of any kind open even to retrace our 
way up the glacier, there was nothing left to do but 
return and try to pass the great rock slide. 

The problem with which we were faced here was 
a dual one. Not only were the huge, sharp-edged 
fragments so set that the sliding hoofs went down 
between them at every other step, but many of them 
were poised in so delicate a balance that the least 
touch was likely to send them bounding on down to 
start a slide that nothing but the side of the glacier 
could stop. 

It was a place which, personally, I would have 
been reluctant to venture upon on foot; with a pack- 
train it seemed like courting certain and serious 
disaster. 

For a hectic interval at the outset, indeed, it looked 
as though disaster was coming to meet us even be- 


[ 162] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


fore we had made a real start. We were working 
the animals, one at a time, out onto what seemed the 
least threatening line of passage across the broken 
rock, when the horse carrying the radio, trying to 
find a way of his own, stepped between two tilted 
chunks, each larger than himself. 

Instantly both closed down upon him, smothering 
his frantic flouncerings in the grip of a vise of stone. 
It looked like broken legs and crushed ribs; almost 
certainly a case beyond all treatment save that of the 
revolver. 

Baptie and La Casse, who were nearest, started 
at once to work away the inclosing rocks, the rest 
of us standing by to prevent a stampede of the 
horses. 

“Buster” and “Tip,” who had been chasing rock- 
rabbits farther up the slide, came charging down, 
dog-like, for the centre of disturbance. The flying 
feet of each started rocks rolling almost simultane- 
ously. ‘Buster’ scored the first hit when the solid 
little hunk he had spurned, smiting Baptie’s mount 
on the off hind hock, knocked it sprawling. 

“Tip’s” salvo, with a ton more weight behind the 
main unit of it, found nothing but the back of my 
knees to mar the curve of its trajectory. F licking 
my legs up into the air, it passed on to crash against 


[ 163 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 
the glacier wall, leaving me sitting upright in its 
sliding wake of debris. 

A missile heavy enough to have shattered a leg of 
the Colossus of Rhodes had brushed my relaxed 
anatomy aside without inflicting more than a few 
very light bruises. 

It took a great deal of lifting, hauling and prying 
to dislodge the rocks from the imprisoned horse 
without starting another slide. When this was 
finally accomplished, however, we had the agreeable 
surprise of finding the sturdy ‘Wolverine’ prac- 
tically uninjured beyond much abrasion of hide. 

The stout cedar pack-box containing the radio 
outfit had taken most of the crushing on one side, 
while a grub-box had absorbed it on the other. That 
the radio was a total loss this time seemed beyond all 
doubt. 

Our progress across that slide of tilted rocks was 
glacial in its slowness, punishing in its severity. 
Horses were down repeatedly, usually with the loss 
of a pack that had to be rethrown while the whole 
train waited and fretted. 

But foot by foot we worried along, and for the first 
and last time in comparative vocal silence. Even 
voluble old “Soapy” bethought himself to choke back 
the explosive oath that might have set the cumulative 


[164] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


ait-wave wriggling that would start another hair- 
balanced rock on the slide above. 

And finally we won through to solid footing again. 
This was a sloping cliff of torn and riven bedrock 
left exposed by the melting of the glacier. It slanted 
downward like the roof of a Gothic steeple, while its 
rough surface tore the unshod hoofs like a rasp. 

But there were no more rock slabs to slip between, 
no more balanced boulders to dislodge. 

There was need of haste now to make the most of 
the dying daylight, and tongues and riatas were un- 
leashed in unison to push on the scurrying, stumbling 
mob. Fantastic cowboy oaths clove the clear air 
like the spatter of shrapnel and the blended sobbing 
of winded horses rose in a whistling croon like the 
wind through the bare limbs of the dead pines fring- 
ing the imminent timber-line. 

Over a half-mile of rock, wet with blood from 
hoofs that had worn to the quick, we clattered down 
onto the packed white gravel of the flats below the 
jutting ice-snout just as the reflection of the last of the 
afterglow was fading from rose-pink to cinnamon 
and dusky olive on the summit of Saskatchewan. 

A half-mile down from the low, uninteresting 
forefront of the glacier, across flats whose flinty rock- 
fragments must have been terribly painful to the 


[165 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


worn, torn hoofs of the horses, “Soapy” turned off to 
a gravelly bench at the foot of the northern mountain 
side. Some one had told him there was a camping- 
place here, but a narrow strip covered with noth- 
ing but rocks and burned timber gave scant encour- 
agement. 

With no grass in sight, the only thing to do was to 
keep going until we found it. Starving pack-horses 
already wearied and battered to the point of collapse 
could hardly have failed to have serious conse- 
quences. 

Ascending a steep ridge where the way through 
the burned dead-falls had repeatedly to be cleared 
for the horses with an ax, we went on down the other 
side to find ourselves in a little valley draining to 
the North Fork of the Saskatchewan a mile or two 
below. Here there was grass but no water, forcing 
us to continue on in the deepening twilight. 

A quarter-mile farther through dense second 
growth brought us to the trampled mud banks of a 
sink a couple of hundred yards in diameter. In the 
spring and early summer there must have been a 
lake here, fed and drained by the stream draining 
the valley of the meltage from the snows. Between 
evaporation and seepage through the porous rocks 
this had now been reduced to a shallow pool, foul and 


[ 166] 


THE MOTHER OF RIVERS 


ill-smelling from the many animals that had waded 
in it for water. 

With no certainty that we would not fare worse 
by going farther, “Soapy” reluctantly decided to un- 
pack where we were. That was the only camp on 
the trip at which good water was not available. 

Too tired to cut tepee- and tent-poles in the dark, 
we rolled to blankets and sleeping-bags as soon as a 
greedily wolfed supper was over. No one but the 
dogs could have told at what time the big bull moose, 
whose fresh tracks we discovered in the morning, 
stalked straight through the camp on his way to 
water. 


[167] 


CHAPTER VIII 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


As “Soapy” was anxious to work the soreness out 
of the horses by action rather than to let them grow 
stiff in a region where the grass was so poor, we 
broke camp early the next morning and started 
on the hard, steep climb over the shoulder of the 
Athabaska to the north. The pack-train attained 
the summit of the ridge and began the descent 
to Nigel Creek at an elevation of about 8,000 
feet while Harmon and I climbed a thousand feet 
higher to take a panorama of the surrounding moun- 
tains. 

From a lofty vantage previously utilized by the 
Boundary Survey we had an extremely fine view of 
the remarkable ridge of rock which is thrown com- 
pletely across the valley of the North Fork, forming 
a natural bridge which has been rarely visited and 
never satisfactorily photographed. 

Following the pack-train to the valley on the 
north, we crossed the almost imperceptible divide of 
Sunwapta Pass, separating the drainage to the Arc- 
tic and to the Atlantic, to find camp pitched four 

[168] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


miles farther down almost under the snout of the 
great Athabaska Glacier. 

Here we spent four days, resting the horses and 
climbing over and photographing the glacier, which 
vies with that of Saskatchewan for the distinction of 
being the largest tentacle of the great main sea of ice 
above. 

In spite of violent snow storms roaring up the val- 
ley of the Sunwapta from the Arctic, the radio, still 
in commission after the terrible banging it had re- 
ceived crossing the glacier, picked up stations in all 
parts of Canada and the United States. We were 
troubled practically not at all with “fade out,” being 
able to hold the programs of the stronger stations 
from end to end when desired. 

It was at this camp that we first began to take no- 
tice of the Pacific Coast weather forecasts, broadcast 
by the powerful KGO station of Oakland. These 
bulletins subsequently became of great practical 
utility to us in planning ahead photographic work 
and trail movements of a character to be affected by 
the breaking of a storm working inland from the 
northwestern Pacific. 

Athabaska Glacier was one of the double-starred 
points of Harmon’s itinerary as originally planned. 
Visiting there ten years previously by working south 


[169] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


from Jasper by the valleys of the Athabaska and Sun- 
wapta, he had found the snout of this tumbling ice- 
river culminating in a perpendicular wall of great 
height. Though unable to take any satisfactory 
photographs because of bad weather, he had always 
recalled that towering wall of blue-green ice as one 
of the outstanding sights of the Rockies. 

Confidently expecting to take at last the pictures 
which had eluded him on his first trip, Harmon’s dis- 
appointment may be imagined when he discovered 
that the great ice-wall, with its deep, ghostly-lighted 
caverns, had disappeared entirely. In its place there 
ran down to the flats of the Sunwapta a slope of 
frozen snow so smooth and unbroken that one might 
have wheeled a baby carriage across it in any direc- 
tion. 

Meltage, with its consequent recession, had played 
the queer prank, leaving the mighty Athabaska with 
the flattened snout of a shovel-nosed shark—a thing 
as devoid of pictorial possibilities as an alkali flat in 
the middle of the Colorado Desert. 

Harmon, who felt that he had been tricked, was so 
much cast down that it took some diplomacy on 
“Soapy’s” part to dissuade him from packing up 
forthwith and starting off over Wilcox Pass for the 
lower Sunwapta. He finally acquiesced reluctantly 


[170] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


in remaining over for a couple of days to give the 
horses a chance to recuperate from the punishment 
received in crossing the glacier. Before that time- 
limit had expired the witchery of Athabaska Gla- 
cier lighting had thrown its spell over the suscepti- 
ble veteran and he was planning shots faster than he 
could load film into his camera. One of these was 
of the scene, previously alluded to, in which old 
“Soapy’s” avid interest in natural history was re- 
sponsible for the ruin of a shot of incomparable 
promise. 

We had set up with a little gem of a jade-green 
glacial lake in the foreground, the tumbling serracs 
of the Athabaska Glacier beyond, and the glittering 
snow-caps along the rim of the great Columbia Ice- 
field in the distance. ‘The rays of the low-hanging 
afternoon sun slanted across the glacier and trans- 
formed the lake into a veritable opal of sparkling 
iridescence. ‘That whole world of ice and snow was 
bathed in that softly actinic golden glow which pre- 
cedes by scant minutes the suffusing rose-pink that 
can be captured by the eye but never transferred to 
the film. 

With only a few minutes left before the glory of 
the golden flood was quenched in the non-actinic 
glows preceding sunset, the film jammed twice in the 


[171] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


cogs of a camera which had come in for scarcely less 
punishment than the radio in crossing the Saskatche- 
wan Glacier. At each failure the three packers, 
who, to give life and action to the shot, were to come 
down across the surface of the glacier and peer into 
the depths of the lake from the brink of the ice-wall 
opposite the camera, were sent back to do it all over 
again. 

Tearing out the wads of ruined film, Harmon 
started the recalcitrant celluloid through the camera 
for the third time. Finally the temperamental yel- 
low strip crooned its even clickity-clack song again 
and, literally riding the crest of the last of that glow- 
ing wave of light, the men started down over the ice 
in response to my signal. 

The thing was sheer perfection—until the leader 
of the trio faltered in his stride, stopped, scooped up 
something from the ice and called his companions 
over to look at it. Unmoved alike by Harmon’s de- 
spairing gestures or my Comanche yells, the little 
group crowded in garrulous wonder around their 
discovery. When we had yelled ourselves speech- 
less and sunk into silent dejection, the sounding board 
of the ice threw over to us the drawling accents of 
old “Soapy,” sepulchral and solemn, as if delivering 
a funeral oration. 


[172] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


“Do youse guys reckon,” he queried, “that this 
yere critter ambled out on the hoof or that he was 
dropped by a soarin’ eagle?” 

Further listening-in informed us that our company 
of movie actors were marvelling as to why the skele- 
ton of a rock-mouse should be found a quarter of a 
mile out on the ice of the glacier. It was a fortunate 
dispensation that neither Harmon nor myself was 
armed. 

Of course we made a fourth attempt at a shot, suc- 
ceeding with it after a fashion. But the glory of 
that great golden wave of light rolling down across 
the surface of the glacier, like the perfect melody 
of “The Lost Chord,” was lost beyond recapture. _ 

This same little glacial lake offered opportunity 
for an interesting experiment with the radio. This 
was to string the aerial right across a short arm of the 
milky-green water, with the lead running down to 
where the receiving set was perched in a niche 
chopped out of the side of an iceberg stranded on 
the beach. The ground was buried in the heart of 
another berg that was lodged against the rocks 
but with its base still in the water. Baby bergs, well 
cushioned with folded coats and blankets, made con- 
venient seats for the listeners-in. 

Morse signals, with a great kick behind them, be- 


[173] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


gan coming in at once. No one in the party, unfor- 
tunately, was able to read them. ‘Though direction 
(there was only one way the antenna could be 
strung) favored reception from the Pacific Coast, 
many eastern stations could be distinguished as the 
afternoon lengthened and the pall of darkness swept 
westward across the continent from the Atlantic. 

We had still a couple of hours of daylight left 
when an Eastern station, which we could not posi- 
tively identify but which had two or three of the let- 
ters WEAF, reported a very hot and oppressive day 
in New York, with many prostrations and several 
deaths. There was a great exodus to the seaside in 
prospect for the week-end. 

A little later KGO informed us that an early af- 
ternoon temperature of 112 degrees in the shade had 
been reported at Fresno, with 120 at Yuma, Ari- 
zona. Evidently the Pacific Southwest, not to be 
outdone by the effete East, was staging a little heat 
carnival of its own. 

But what a time and place it was to get reports of 
heat prostrations and the hegiras of sweltering mobs 
to the beaches! And how we grinned back and 
forth about it, to the accompaniment of expressive 
pantomime, across the magic box! And it really 
was very amusing and strange and wonderful. Ex- 


[174] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


cept for an attenuated strip of berg-battered shale 
under our feet and a pile of glacier-ground rocks just 
behind us, nothing whatever met our eyes in any di- 
rection save ice and snow and a glassy sheet of half- 
frozen water. Sun-strokes and heat prostrations!— 
and going on even as we perched there on the ice. 

It was unfortunate that gathering clouds, begin- 
ning to pour down across the glacier with a threat of 
storm, made it seem advisable to take down our ice- 
strung aerial and hurry the radio back to the shelter 
of the tepee. Quality and clearness of reception was 
improving greatly as night approached, and it would 
have been very interesting to carry the experiment on 
into the more favourable hours of darkness. 

In spite of the direction of the antenna, which 
pointed about south-southwest, Eastern stations were 
coming in more clearly than we were ever to have 
them again by daylight. The ice may have had 
something to do with this, though I am inclined to 
believe that the extremely careful set-up was the 
main factor. Most of our subsequent daylight 
string-ups were made very hurriedly and roughly, 
many of them on the trail, as when we tried the re- 
sults of a World’s Series game and know who won 
the pool for the day. 

We never ceased to speculate, during the four days 


[175] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


we remained at our present camp, as to whether or 
not it would have been possible to head north-west 
across the heart of the Columbia Icefield and come 
off by the Athabaska Glacier as we had done by the 
Saskatchewan. From what we had seen with our 
glasses from the summit of Castleguard, there was 
little doubt that the gently sloping surface of the 
great mer de glace itself would have presented few 
if any difficulties to the pack-train. Nor was there, 
moreover, any question at all that the horses could 
have traversed the lower two-miles of the Athabaska 
Glacier with much greater safety than they had that 
part of the Saskatchewan. 

That reduced the doubtful zone to two or three 
miles of tumbling serracs—masses of down-pouring 
ice like frozen waterfalls—between the brink of the 
main icefield and the comparatively smooth lower 
glacier. From below we fancied that we could dis- 
cern practicable passages for the horses down every 
one of these three or four barriers. From the vant- 
age gained by a two-mile climb up the ice from the 
base of the flattened snout things did not look so 
favourable. The ice-ridges forming the only feasible 
route down the first serrac were so narrow that it 
looked as if the horses would have the greatest diffi- 
culty in keeping out of the flanking crevasses. And 


[176] 


YaIOVIS NVMAHOLVASVS AO TIVM 
OL ONINNOY TVIYAV GNV OYAEAOI GHAGNVALS VY NO dN 
LaS O1GVA HLIM NI ONINALSIT NVWAdAdW AGNV HLINS ,,AdVOS,, 


ffuvg “uowsny wortg fo tsajzinoy 





SMAN ONINAAT ATAVA AHL HLYOA GANIHM UWAMVAdS GNOT SV NVO dAaAAOD V GNV NIL YAadMOd ONIAVEA V 
‘uou4snFT uortg fo Xsazinoy 








OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


these would have undoubtedly have proved worse at 
close range. ‘That is the way with ice. 

Our conclusion was that, while there was a bare 
chance that the traverse by this route might be possi- 
ble, the odds against it were far too great to justify 
taking the risk. The penalty of failing to find a 
way over the broken ice at the head of Athabaska 
Glacier would inevitably mean a night on the main 
icefield with exhausted and unfed horses. Most of 
these could probably be taken back to Castleguard 
Valley the following day—if no accident occurred. 
I can hardly conceive, however, that a pack-train 
could be disentangled from the mazes of up-tossed 
ice on upper Athabaska Glacier without serious 
losses. 

The dogs were allowed to accompany us on our 
climb up the Athabaska Glacier, and shortly showed 
their appreciation of the unusual privilege by getting 
lost and cut off from us in a maze of crevasses. No 
one saw just how the thing happened, but as “Bus- 
ter” was always the leader of forays far afield, there 
is little doubt the responsibility was his. 

Instead of using his abnormally keen and active in- 
telligence to work a way out of the trouble, however, 
our prize movie performer, after several futile dashes 
to all parts of the compass, simply sat down on his 


[177] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


haunches, pointed his nose heavenward and howled 
his despair after the fashion of his wolfish progeni- 
tors. La Casse, who could usually control and direct 
the movements of his pet with the turn of a hand, 
wig-wagged and shouted in vain. “Buster,” with a 
fighting courage that would send him leaping at the 
throat of anything from a wolverine to a grizzly, was 
completely cowed by the impassable depths of yawn- 
ing green caverns which appeared to hem him in on 
every side. Possibly, like some humans, he was 
gifted with too much imagination. 

Not so “Tip.” Turning his tail to a discredited 
leader, he began running with that swift, purposeful 
lope that had carried him around the bend of the 
Alexandra to an unseen ford, and over the great cat- 
aract below Castleguard to avoid a crossing which 
he sensed as too rough for him to swim. ‘Turned 
aside again and again but never back, that persistent 
lope continued until it had brought the altogether 
unaccountable little Indian mongrel to his favourite 
perch on “‘Soapy’s” chaparejoed knees. 

“Buster,” still too much gripped by despair to use 
even ordinary canine intelligence, had not even the 
sense to put his keen nose to ‘““Tip’s” trail and follow 
it out. He continued to wail his grief to the hang- 
ing glaciers on Mount Athabaska until La Casse, 


[178] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


working inward by “Tip’s” claw-marks on the ice, 
gave him a sound drubbing and showed him the way 
to freedom. 

By far our most encouraging radio achievement 
to date occurred on the last night but one spent in 
the camp at Athabaska Glacier. The dependable 
KGO and the Puget Sound stations in both Wash- 
ington and Canada had become regular routine by 
this time. Eastern stations we had picked up at fre- 
quent intervals when the weather was favourable but 
they had not always been clear or easy to hold. 

The lid of darkness had been clapped down early, 
following the onslaught of what gave every indica- 
tion of being an all-night blizzard blowing straight 
from the Arctic. This, judging from previous ex- 
perience, boded ill for radio reception. Not only 
did atmospheric conditions appear to be highly un- 
favourable, but the increasing violence of the wind 
threatened to bring down the aerial itself, as had 
happened one night in Castleguard. 

The discouraging prospect was all but responsible 
for our not limbering up the set at all for the eve- 
ning. ‘The radio ardor of Ulus, the cook, however, 
would not permit him to give best to the storm with- 
out a fight. When the California and Washington 
stations came in but weakly and intermittently at the 


[179] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


explorative turning of the dials, it seemed that the 
forecasts of the pessimists were about to prove 
justified. 

“Soapy” and Harmon went to bed and I prepared 
to follow suit by blowing up the sag in my sleeping- 
bag. Suddenly a cheery cackle rattled through the 
tepee—unmistakable laughter even after the distor- 
tion of leaking out through head-phones clapped 
to the ears of Rob and Ulus. When the latter beck- 
oned me over to take a unit of his phone, I was just 
in time to hear a hearty, rollicking voice announce 
that “Station KDKA, East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvany- 
eeny-iny-ah,” was about to broadcast a program “for 
the benefit of the ladies of Bagdad.” 

He didn’t expect it would reach them, the an- 
nouncer said, for even KDKA had never been heard 
quite that far to the east; but, just the same, he was 
going to broadcast this program to the ladies of Bag- 
dad. He had heard a lot about the ladies of Bag- 
dad, and was going out there to see them sometime. 
Then they could not only bag dad, but they could 
bag him as well. His pants were baggy at the knees 
already, and he understood baggy pants were quite 
the thing to be bagged in Bagdad. 

After a bit more of this light and airy introductory 

[180] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


chatter, a program of Oriental music was put on. 
It must have been furnished by some sort of Arab 
troupe, for the skirl of the pipes, the peculiar timbre 
of the high-keyed voices and the barbaric cadences 
set it apart at once as distinct from the conventional 
Broadway “Streets of Cairo” imitation. 

After the Oriental numbers were over, KDKA 
continued with several artists who were evidently 
well known to the listening-in clientele. The jocu- 
lar announcer called them all by their first names, 
usually to the accompaniment of a bit of badinage, 
as when he stated that “this old broken-down, Ed 
Squires, will now sing a new song entitled ‘My 
Radio Girl.’” Squires came back with delicate 
repartee in similar vein, as did most of his fellow 
artists. 

The jolly KDKA “Master of Ceremonies” also 
poked much innocent fun at the announcers of vari- 
ous rival stations, apparently on the assumption that 
they were known to all of his listeners-in. One of 
these shots, the gist of which we did not get, was di- 
rected at “my old friend and well wisher, Bill Hays, 
of Hastings.’ Our acquaintance with the genial 
Hays had been a somewhat spotted one up to this 
time, but we subsequently came to know him as a 


[181] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


nightly visitor when KFKX changed to a wave- 
length better suited for penetrating to our mountain 
retreat. 

We held KDKA without a break right on to its 
signing-off, but missed the exact time of the latter 
because the dogs were still howling their apprecia 
tion—or rather their disapproval—of the concluding 
soprano solo. From the fact that it was after nine 
o’clock, Mountain Time, it must have been later than 
midnight in Pittsburgh. This led us to conclude 
that the program, which consisted almost entirely of 
light musical numbers and jazz, was a special after- 
the-theatre concert or something of the kind. We 
cut in on it several times later, but never on succes- 
sive nights. 

The reaction of the dogs to the radio was of never- 
failing interest. ‘The voices leaking out of the head- 
phones were very real to them. Their general be- 
haviour on hearing most of the sounds was similar to 
that manifested in listening to the sounds of an ap- 
proaching pack-train. They were put on the alert 
instantly but were not seriously concerned. 

The distinct and unmistakable voices of women, 
however, were quite another matter. Our zealous 
canine guardians seemed to feel that women had no 
business about the place, and so actively resented 


[182] 


Sov R TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


sounds which appeared to herald their approach. 
In the case of KDKA’s soprano their howls of pro- 
test Were more in sorrow than in anger, but when, 
half an hour later, CKCD of Vancouver came on 
with a so-called ‘‘Poetess of Passion’? reading her 
own verse, they were just plain fighting mad. 

The name of the ethereal invader, as announced, 
sounded very like “Carry-me-homah,” but was prob- 
ably just Carrie something or other. The mental 
picture she conjured was of a tall, black-draped fig- 
ure, swaying before the microphone and boring it 
with eyes the color of purple grapes. Her voice was 
full and resonant; the burning words were winged 
with the kick of a sharply flexed diaphragm behind 
every syllable. 

It was the militant ‘Buster’? who tore loose the 
flap of the tepee door in leading the charge out into 
the snowstorm, with the apparent intention of attack- 
ing the invader in the timber; but it was the subtle- 
minded “Tip” who was the first to sense the futility 
of a campaign in that direction, and who came yelp- 
ing back to tear the enemy out of her protecting 
black box. Here, presently, he was joined by the 
baffled ‘‘Buster,” and no spine-backed porcupine 
cornered in the timber was ever told more plain, 
unpleasant truths about himself than were voiced 


[183] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


by our two faithful guardians in trying to bring 
home to that elusive poetess of passion just the man- 
ner in which she would be chewed to shoe-strings if 
she ever came out of her hiding place to disturb the 
Nirvanic calm of our hitherto peaceful camp. 

Both dogs took a lot of petting and soothing be- 
fore they would cease worrying the radio box and 
settle down in their places by the fire. But so, also, 
would most people who had to listen to a poetess of 
passion reading her own verse. 

Our last day at Athabaska Glacier we took ad- 
vantage of bright sunshine and brilliant lighting to 
climb fifteen hundred feet to a shoulder of Mount 
Wilcox to make a panorama of the rim of Columbia 
Icefield from the northeast. Just as we reached the 
first of the meadows leading on to Wilcox Pass the 
dogs started up and gave chase to the finest specimen 
of black fox I have ever seen. Fully as long as 
“Buster” though standing not quite as high, his 
silky hair glistened in the sunlight like a block of 
newly-mined anthracite. A streaming, bushy tail, 
almost as long as his body, was tipped with a flow- 
ing tassel of snowy white. 

With a yell of, “There goes two thousand plunks 
worth of fur,” “Soapy” spurred on his speedy thor- 


[184] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


oughbred and dashed away in the wake of the flying 
dogs. 

For a mad minute or two it looked like a real race. 
“Buster” and “Tip,” yelping with ecstasy, fairly tore 
up the grass-roots in their eagerness; the swift-footed 
“Alice,” with “Soapy” leaning flat along her ex- 
tended neck, ran in a pyrotechnic spatter of steel- 
struck sparks. 

Then that animated fur boa, apparently having 
only tolerated the pursuit as long as it interested him, 
simply dematerialized. No other word quite de- 
scribes that lightning disappearance. One moment 
there was a lazily-loping black fox, with two dogs 
and a horse closing hard upon his leisurely heels; 
the next two foolish dogs and a swearing man on a 
reined-in horse were watching a dark streak parting 
a path through the lush grass and flowers of the 
mountain meadow. 

As usual, both dogs and man, Chinese-fashion, 
tried to “save face.” “Buster” and “Tip,” spying a 
flock of sheep a few hundred yards off on the moun- 
tain-side, dashed off in that direction in a studied 
attempt to convey the impression that these com- 
paratively slow-footed denizens of the cliffs were 
really all that they wanted to catch anyhow. And 


[185] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


when the bighorn, finally taking fright, left their 
pursuers in a few swift leaps, the wily “Buster” 
promptly turned aside and led a fierce but futile at- 
tack upon his perennial enemy, the rock-rabbit. 

Old “Soapy” tried to hide his disappointment un- 
der a cloak of sunny philosophy, saying the fur 
would not be prime until midwinter, and that then, 
maybe, he would snowshoe in and trap both the 
owner and his mate. 

All through the rest of the trip the plan of coming 
back in January to collect the three or four thousand 
dollars worth of fur, hitherto denied to Fifth Avenue 
or Rue de la Paix through the misfortune of remain- 
ing on the backs of “that black devil” and his family, 
was a subject of never-failing interest among the 
packers. Whether they went or not I have never 
heard. 

Two or three black-fox hides, with those from the 
incidental trapping of marten and wolverine, would 
seem to have made the venture well worth while— 
providing, of course, the foxes were caught. This 
much to be desired consummation, however, the men 
always seemed to take as practically assured. None 
of them ever vouchsafed other than negative or hos- 
tile notice to me on the several occasions when I in- 
terrupted discussions of their plans for spending the 


[186] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


money by quoting the beginning of the old cook- 
book recipe, “First catch your hare. . . .” 

The view from the point at which we made our 
panorama on the shoulder of Mount Wilcox was 
both beautiful and interesting. The three great ice- 
falls by which the Athabaska Glacier descends from 
the Columbia Icefield through a gap between Mount 
Athabaska and the Snow Dome were clearly defined. 
Here, again, it looked as though a way for the horses 
could be found down through the mazes of crevasses, 
but we were really too far distant to make observa- 
tion on that point really dependable. 

My considered advice to any mountain party 
which might be tempted to chance this extremely 
fascinating but highly hazardous traverse is just 
plain “Don’t!” 

The Dome Glacier, tumbling down between the 
abrupt northern wall of the Snow Dome and Mount 
Kitchener, was visible from our vantage for nearly 
all of its short length. Fallen rocks give it a very 
dirty, unwashed sort of a look, especially where its 
snub snout is pushed out against that of the clean 
white of the Athabaska Glacier at the head of the 
Sunwapta. 

The sheer wall of the Snow Dome is the one I 
have mentioned in the previous chapter as present- 


[187] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


ing so sharp a contrast to the smooth, unbroken slope 
running up from the Columbia Icefield to the 
rounded summit of that strange mountain. 

Baptie, who had spent most of the day rounding 
up strayed horses, found time in the afternoon to 
bring down and into camp a fine mountain ram. It 
was shot on the “Big Hill,’ where the Banff-ward 
trail winds down to the North Fork of the Sas- 
katchewan. 

Why one bunch of the horses, with so much good 
grazing near camp, should wander ten miles to the 
south, was no more to be accounted for than the fact 
that another bunch climbed the steep slope to Wil- 
cox Pass and were found just as far to the north. 

With clear, cold weather locally on our final night 
at the Athabaska, radio came in better from Pacific 
Coast stations than from those of the East. ‘This was 
in direct contrast to reception conditions of the pre- 
vious night, though no change had been made in the 
direction of the aerial. Distant storms, doubtless; 
had much to do with the difference. 

KGO came in clear as a bell all evening, includ- 
ing the late supper concert of the Fairmount orches- 
tra in San Francisco. Finding Ulus and Rob sing- 
ing and swaying in unison to the seductive jazz 
winged to their ears across a thousand miles or more 


[188] 


OVER TO THE ARCTIC BASIN 


of mountain and plain, Harmon and I seized the 
occasion to set off a calcium flare in the tepee camp- 
fire and transfer the amusing scene to celluloid. 
This gave opportunity for the subsequent cut-in of 
a highly contrasting scene showing the after-theater 
dancers jazzing at the Fairmount. 

Thus it was, watching our chances as they came— 
and especially on the score of these little human 
touches—that we continued to build up our scenic 
of the Rockies. 


[189] 


CHAPTER IX 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


THE final base of photographic operations we had 
planned in completing our work on and around the 
Columbia Icefield was the head of the Athabaska, 
immediately under the great peaks of Alberta, The 
Twins, King Edward and Columbia., As the crow 
flies, the distance from our camp at Athabaska Gla- 
cier was not great, but by the only possible route 
with pack-train it was close to eighty miles of flooded 
valleys. 

Because the canyon of the Sunwapta (which be- 
gins three or four miles below the terminal moraine 
of Athabaska and falls a thousand feet or more be- 
tween closely-boxed walls) was impassable for 
horses, we had to begin the long and circuitous jour- 
ney by climbing over the lofty Wilcox Pass to the 
east. 

Wilcox Pass was named from W. D. Wilcox, who 
with R. L. Barrett, was the first white man to use it 
when he crossed, in 1896, from the North Fork of 
the Saskatchewan to the Sunwapta on his way to 
Fortress Lake. ‘There are one or two higher passes 


[190] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


in the Canadian Rockies, and many that are rougher, 
rockier and more difficult to traverse in good 
weather. It is its most unbrokenly bad weather that 
has gained for Wilcox so sinister a reputation. It is 
the first to be closed by winter snows and the last to 
be opened by spring thaws. ‘This is due less to its 
altitude than to the fact that, with the Columbia Ice- 
field acting as a great condenser of the moisture 
laden airs blowing in from the Pacific, the region 
has what is probably the heaviest snow and rain- 
falls in all the Rockies. 

Of the dozen or so parties that have used the Wil- 
cox Pass route in the last decade, most of those going 
Over very much earlier or later than midsummer 
have had snow trouble. 

Our party, late as the season was, had an excep- 
tionally fine day for the lofty traverse. There was 
a hard, tiring climb up from the south, several miles 
through rolling mountain meadows where our worst 
difficulty was to keep the horses from scattering to 
graze, and then a steep descent to through knee-deep 
moss to a comfortable camp a mile below timber- 
line. 

While Harmon and I clambered back to the 
heights with the cameras in the hope of getting a 
chance for mountain sheep pictures, Ulus and Rob, 


[191] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


with several hours of daylight to work in, set about 
making what they announced would be the most 
perfect string-up of the antenna we had yet had. 
The aerial was the important thing, they explained; 
once get that right, and only the sky and the oceans 
were our limit. 

It was twilight when we returned to camp, and 
quite dark before supper was over. Our experts, 
gleefully telling how the antenna was stretched be- 
tween a cliff and the highest trees we had yet found, 
opened up the radio and began tuning-in. 

It was a gala-night program promised for that eve- 
ning by KFI of Los Angeles that they were espe- 
cially anxious to get, but if a few new Eastern sta- 
tions wanted to come through and entertain us, so 
much the better. We would give them all a turn— 
provided, of course, they had the power to reach us. 
It was juice that talked in this long-distance stuff. 
Thus Ulus. 

After getting up our hopes like that, it was, natu- 
rally, a bit disappointing to find we were cocking 
receptive ears into empty air. The strongest sounds 
heard were the magnified clangs set ringing when an 
impatiently jiggered needle reached the end of its 
beat. 

Not without experience of the reactions of French- 


[192] 





Photo by L. R. Freeman 


MIDWAY OF THE ATHABASKA GLACIER 





Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 
TOP OF FALLS OF THE SUNWAPTA 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


Canadian temperament, and especially of a French- 
Canadian cook, Harmon, as Ulus’ face grew redder 
and redder with suppressed rage at the misbehaviour 
of his pet, rose quietly and left the tepee. Trailing 
his bobbing flashlight a few minutes later, I found 
him feverishly engaged in hiding the axes and other 
instruments of destruction for fear the irate cook 
would use them on the radio. 

The dark, sweeping line of the antenna was out- 
lined clearly against the cloudless sky as we turned 
to go back to the tepee. Harmon, his eyes fixed on 
the polar star, stopped short in his tracks and then 
broke into a chuckle. 

“That is sure a wonderful string-up the boys 
made,” he whispered. “Only thing wrong seems to 
be that they pointed it off toward Labrador.” 

And that, beyond a doubt, was what was at the bot- 
tom of the unexpected silence of the ether. The 
lead has been brought down from the northern end 
of the antenna. We were careful not to repeat the 
mistake, and that was the last time the air refused to 
talk tous. 

Off to an early start the following morning, a mile 
through timber where the way had frequently to be 
cleared with an ax took us to the brink of an ex- 
tremely steep descent of over a thousand feet to the 


[193] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Sunwapta. The first three hundred feet of this was 
down a grassy, untimbered slope where even the 
mountain sheep had found it easier to keep their 
footing by making long zigzags. 

If there had been only one of these sheep trails it 
might have been possible to keep the horses to it. 
With half a dozen of them to choose between they 
scattered, and so did the packs of two venturesome 
animals who plumped for perpendicular rather 
than zigzag descents. One of these was ‘“‘Wolver- 
ine,” with the radio, who described two perfect 
parabolic-curved somersaults, and half a dozen that 
were not so perfect. 

At the foot of the open slope the flying mass of 
horse and pack telescoped against a sturdy spruce 
trunk as neatly and compactly as the lily in Tenny- 
son’s song that 


‘“.. . folds all its sweetness up 


And sinks into the bosom of the lake.” 


We had long since become deeply entrenched in 
the belief that both the ‘‘Wolverine” and the radio 
carried their own protecting magic. The squat, 
dachshund-like pack-horse, when we finally got him 
on his feet and smoothed out the bends and creases, 


[194] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


was found to be little altered in shape and not at all 
in the ability to function. Neither was the radio, as 
we discovered when we set it two nights later. 

The radio was riding much better on the trail 
after the overhauling given it at the camp at Atha- 
baska Glacier. Cutting down the strips of cedar 
salvaged from the crushing on Saskatchewan Gla- 
cier, we had constructed a new box that was four 
inches less in width than the original. It took a 
deal of fitting before the block of batteries was hu- 
moured into a shape that would go into the recon- 
ditioned container, but once there they rode much 
more solidly and compactly than before. 

Better still was the fact that the narrower box 
missed a good many trees and ledges that the broader 
one had tried to push out of the way. It also came 
more nearly to a balance with the grub-box which 
rode on the other side, making a load much less 
likely to turn or press unevenly. 

With little in the way of a track to follow, the 
pack-train spread out a good deal in working down 
the last thousand feet of descent through the timber. 
As there was not much of any place to get to but the 
river whichever way they went, the only effect of 
the “line abreast” formation was to make a lot of 


[195] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


extra work in extricating horses from the maze of 
dead-falls in which they were constantly becoming 
entangled. 

When a pack-train is going ahead in single file the 
cutting away of an obstructing tree will allow all 
the animals to pass. If they scatter in bunches 
through the timber a way has to be cleared for each 
line. This breaking up of a train is, of course, 
avoided as far as possible. It is always liable to oc- 
cur, however, in working down a steep slope through 
heavy timber, especially where there is no previous 
track to follow. 

We came back to the Sunwapta at the foot of the 
deep canyon leading down from the flats below 
Athabaska Glacier. It was flowing in a single 
boulder-choked channel that was beset with many 
swift chutes and tumbling rapids. 

As the mountain walls fell back and the valley 
widened the descent of the stream was less tumultu- 
ous. At the end of a mile it was spreading over 
gravel flats and occasionally dividing into broad, 
shallow channels which gave no trouble in fording. 

The pack-train rattled along at a fast pace down 
the broadening flats, crossing the river at will to 
shorten distance. Everything appeared favourable 


[196] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


to keeping right on to the mouth of the Pobokton, 
where the maps indicated the first stretch of good 
trail to be encountered since leaving Lake Louise. 

The rim of the northerly extension of the Colum- 
bia Icefield, bright with sun-glazed snow-crowns 
and sparkling glaciers, formed the skyline to the 
west. Milk-white glacial streams came pouring 
down at frequent intervals to augment rapidly the 
volume of the main river. The latter, fortunately, 
spreading rather than deepening as its flow in- 
creased, was still easy to cross for a number of miles. 

What at a distance had appeared to be a yellow- 
brown boulder lying on a gravel bar, provided us a 
lively diversion when it suddenly doubled in height 
and began to move. With a shout of “Grizzly!” 
“Soapy” began calling off the dogs (neither of 
which were “bear broke”) and fumbling for his 
rifle. 

The dogs were quite out of control, however, and 
with the belligerent “Buster” yelping in the lead, 
dashed in for a death-grapple. Expecting every in- 
stant to see a paw-cuffed canine rise in a widening 
parabola against the glacial background beyond, all 
five of us left the pack-train to shift for itself and 
spurred on to the rescue of our beloved pets. If 


[197] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


they couldn’t be saved, we could at least wreak re- 
venge on their murderer and give the victims a 
Christian burial. 

Fond thoughts of “Buster’s” lordly but engaging 


” bright and winning ways, arose 


arrogance, of ‘“Tip’s 
in my mind as I gave swift “La Belle” her head and 
tunneled into the wake of gravel spurned by the 
hoofs of the speedy “Alice R.” Every man-jack of 
of us subsequently confessed that he was thinking of 
the dogs as among the dear, dead, departed right up 
to the finish of that whirlwind race across the flats. 

With all three combatants rolling in an inextric- 
ably entangled ball of milling legs and flying fur, it 
appeared that we had come too late fora rescue and 
that revenge and burial would have to be the order 
of the day. But as we reined in our horses on the 
verge of the fray it became evident that there was 
still a bit of the vital spark left in the two viciously 
snarly and biting knots of kinetic energy which, a 
minute before, had been our romping, affectionate 
pets. 

Yes, there was a lot of life in our good dogs yet; 
really very much more than in the mauled and be- 
draggled carcass of the ancient billy-goat they were 
worrying to a death that would have been but a mat- 
ter of a few days in any event. 


[198] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


With teeth worn to the gums or gone entirely, and 
with tottering legs no longer strong enough to carry 
him over the rocks after grass, the unfortunate old 
patriarch of a flock, ceasing to challenge the law 
of gravity among the cliffs, had descended to the 
warm river flats to die alone. Dragging his ema- 
ciated frame about the clay-stained rocks had mud- 
died the once snowy hair to the yellow-brown which, 
seen at a distance, had led even the eagle-eyed Rob 
to second “‘Soapy’s” snap verdict of “Grizzly!” 

With the end already near, it was really very much 
of a mercy to have had a slow death by starvation re- 
placed by the sudden surcease winged by a mush- 
rooning soft-nosed bullet. Doubtless the brave old 
patriarch would have preferred to have it that way 
himself, though it is a pity his pride could not have 
been spared the humiliation and ignominy of that 
mauling by the dogs. 

For four or five miles the river broadened and 
shallowed in widening flats, the current growing 
slower and slower as the declivity decreased. A 
light stratum of soil above the gravel brought grass 
with it, and presently blooming flowers. 

As the layer of silt increased in thickness the river 
courses multiplied and burrowed, until we found 
ourselves working down across a network of chan- 


[199] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


nels, many of which were too deep and steep of bank 
to cross without danger of wetting the packs. That 
made it necessary to take circuitous courses around 
the bends and over the jutting points of mountain 
reaching out like capes into the sea of the level flats. 
Our swift, direct progress down the upper valley 
gave place to the slow, wearing windings which 
had proved so troublesome and costly on the North 
Fork of the Saskatchewan and the lower Alexandra. 

For a while—with the silt fairly solid underfoot— 
Wwe were more annoyed than concerned over the de- 
lays imposed by the changed conditions. Then, 
swift and sudden as a thunder-clap, came trouble 
that was near to disaster. 

La Casse was leading the pack-train around the 
sharp cut-bank at the outside of the bend of a chan- 
nel too deep to risk fording. Baptie was midway 
of the straggling string, with ““Soapy” bringing up 
the rear. Harmon and I, stopping now and then 
to take pictures, had dropped several hundred yards 
behind “Soapy.” 

A wild yell—more in anger than in anguish— 
from La Casse, the staccato snortings of frightened 
horses and an obbligato of excited canine yelps, con- 
stituted the only prelude to the sudden transforma- 

[200] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


tion which followed. One moment there was a 
pack-train of normal four-legged horses winding 
quietly around the bend; the next ten of them had 
been reduced to floundering, legless trunks. 

The five leaders, including the mount of La Casse, 
had started the show by going belly-deep into the 
mud as suddenly as though let through trap-doors. 
This was too much for the wily “Rat,” who 
promptly went over the bank into the river, followed 
by the amphibious “Nelly,” ‘Wolverine,’ with the 
radio, and the three next in line. 

Baptie and La Casse, with their own horses down, 
were helpless for the moment; Harmon and I were 
out of the picture entirely. So there was no one to 
divide the credit with old “Soapy” for the swift dash 
which resulted in halting midway the dive of 
“Jerry,” the movie horse, for the river, and the sub- 
sequent turning back of the three or four packs which 
followed. 

That saved the movie camera but not much else. 
As Baptie dismounted to give his horse a chance to 
regain its footing, the excited animal jerked away 
from him and floundered over the bank after ‘“The 
Rat” and his aquatic followers. La Casse man- 
aged to hold his horse on the verge, but the four 


[201] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


pack-animals immediately behind him rolled over 
into the river as fast as they freed themselves from 
the mud. 

There must have been nine or ten feet of lazily- 
flowing water under the caving bank, so that every 
horse, at the end of the five-foot drop from above, 
had enough momentum to carry him, pack and head, 
well under the surface. When they came up they 
had lost all sense of direction, and so kept milling 
round in bunches and trying to climb on each other’s 
backs. This was the one thing needed to make the 
soaking through and through of the packs quite com- 
plete. It was especially annoying in the light of 
the fact that there was an easily-sloping and fairly 
solid sand-bar over which to get out of the river on 
the opposite side. 

The inevitable toll of all kinds of provisions save 
canned goods was serious enough, but the threat of 
real disaster was in the fact that all of the photo- 
graphic film—exposed and unexposed—was in the 
boxes on the back of an especially enthusiastic swim- 
mer called “Nig.” Getting him out and unpacked 
was the first thing to be done. This could only be 
accomplished from the farther side. 

La Casse, with Baptie clinging to the tail of his 
swimming horse, crossed below the bend. ‘The rest 

[ 202 | 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


of us found a shallower ford above, where the movie 
horse could wade without danger of wetting his 
pack. As soon as the swimmers saw us come out 
onto the solid ground beyond the east bank, all but 
two of them wallowed over to join us of their own 
accord. 

It seemed just a shade beyond routine hard-luck 
when it transpired that the two absentees were 
“Nig,” with the films, and “Nelly,” with the scarcely 
less precious salt and sugar remnants. The fault 
appeared to have been that of the playful trail-born 
filly. Trying to hurdle “Nig’s” back, the water- 
slacked lash-rope had caught over the end of a pack- 
box, and there she hung, like a rearing bronze horse 
on a fountain, enveloped in the showers of spray 
kicked up by her flying hoofs. 

The lively water spectacle would really have been 
very funny if only the two actors had been laden 
with packs of less vital importance, such as Har- 
mon’s tent or ‘‘Soapy’s” bed-roll. Now it was 
“Nelly” that was beneath the surface, now “Nig”; 
and both of them seemed to assume it was the other 
that was responsible for the ducking. It was the 
high-strung colt that was the maddest about it, and 
some of her bites into “‘Nig’s” glossy black mane 
were a bit more than playful love-nips. 


[203 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


As there was no way to reach the floundering 
equine Noyades to disentangle them where they were, 
Baptie probably hit upon the best solution of the 
problem when he lassoed the both in one loop and so 
made it possible for us to tail on and bring them 
over to the bar with a “‘yo-heave-ho” on the riata. 

Though there was no favourable camping-ground 
for many miles, the necessity of salvaging everything 
possible from the soaked packs made a halt where 
we were imperative. Harmon and I began on the 
pack-boxes containing the photographic supplies the 
instant the “Nelly’-““Nig” liaison had been dissolved. 
The men took the rest of the outfit a quarter-mile 
across the flats to unpack and make such camp as was 
possible on the fire-scarred eastern mountain-side. 

There was mud and water in both pack-boxes, 
with the card-board containers of all the films re- 
duced to soft masses of pulp. Moving picture film, 
together with the roll film for my still cameras, ap- 
peared uninjured in their tins. In fact, the only 
loss suffered by the tinned film was a single roll of 
my own, to which water had penetrated under the 
loosely-taped top of its can. Not a foot of the 
movie film was hurt by water, either at this time or 
later. 

The case of Harmon’s large stock of film-packs, 


[ 204 ] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


however, appeared more serious. With the fibre 
outer wrappings turned to slush, there still remained 
coverings of oiled paper and tin-foil. Most of the 
transparent ruby-coloured paper had drops of water 
standing upon its oily surface, and a bit of this had 
gone through to wet the layer of foil. But the black 
paper of the pack itself was hardly more than moist 
on the outside, indicating that the sensitized film be- 
neath was almost certainly unaffected by the bath. 
This was borne out by subsequent development in 
Banff, many weeks later. 

It was necessary, of course, to get rid of all the 
moisture both in the film-packs and their wrappings 
before packing them up again, and on that tedious 
job Harmon and I spent all of the rest of the day. 
A fly was erected to break the direct rays of the sun, 
and under this the unwrapped film-packs were laid 
out on tarpaulins to dry in the wind. The last of 
the little rectangles of film was not rewrapped until 
after dark. 

It was a great relief to all of the party to have as- 
surance that no injury had been done to the unpro- 
tected film-packs. Harmon really cared more for 
these still negatives than for the movie films, for they 
were to complete a collection of Canadian Rockies 
views which had been twenty years in the making. 


[205 | 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


The loss to provisions was a heavy one. ‘The sal- 
vage from the sugar and salt amounted to only 
enough of each to fill a couple of empty baking- 
powder cans. Worse still, some of the dirty brown 
chips from each lot had become mixed in drying, so 
that one had to taste them to be sure of what he was 
getting. And if one forgot that explorative tongue- 
dab, the consequence was liable to be a salted cup of 
coffee or a sugared chop of mountain mutton. 

Flour and oatmeal suffered heavily, especially the 
latter. Flour automatically forms an indurated 
protective coat at the touch of water, leaving as a 
net loss only the layer that hardens. Oatmeal will 
do the same thing if packed tightly in its bag, but 
the exclusion of water from the inner heart is less 
complete. Our oats, being loosely sacked, took 
water all the way through and so left little salvage. 

The remnants of our dwindling stock of canned 
stuff were, of course, not hurt. Neither was the 
dried fruit nor the dehydrated vegetables, though not 
a whole afternoon of sunning would reduce either to 
its former concentrated bulk. This was of little 
importance now, however, as there was pack-room 
and to spare. 

The radio we drained, cleaned and dried as best 
we could, but the wretched camp offered no trees 


[ 206 | 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


high enough to carry the aerial even if there had 
been anyone with enough time to string it. 

All of the beds were wet; that of Ulus was soaked. 
The unlucky cook poured a gallon or more of water 
out of his sleeping-bag but never got it thoroughly 
dried until toward the end of our long vigil under 
Mount Columbia. 

That was another “maiden” camp to name, and 
we named it—thoroughly. Suggestions came in all 
afternoon and most of the night. The most refined 
of them was much worse than the worst suggested 
for our flood camp on the lower Alexandra. And 
even those, as I have already told, were unprintable 
save on asbestos. 

With wet beds and the floor of the tepee tilted to 
a twenty-degree slope, no one doubted that we were 
going to have a miserable night of it. Wedid. An 
individual ant-hill under three of the four beds, with 
“Buster's” sleeping blanket thrown over a fourth 
nest of the vicious little pests, lent a final and fitting 
“sorrow’s crown of sorrow” to the end of a far from 
perfect day. 

Anxious to put the accursed place behind us as 
speedily as possible, we rolled out before sunrise in 
the hope of rounding up the horses early and making 
a start that would compensate for the time lost the 


[207 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


previous day. With the mountain-side blocked 
with dead-falls, none of the horses had wandered far 
during the night, and we had all but one of them in 
and under saddle before breakfast was ready. 

But just as the strength of a chain is that of its 
weakest link, so is the ability of a pack-train to get 
under way dependent upon the last of its units to be 
found and brought to camp. This lone stray of 
ours—a nameless sorrel—was still adrift at eleven 
o'clock. It was Harmon who finally tracked it 
down, just before noon, where it was held so firmly 
in a natural stanchion of dead-falls that the close- 
gripped neck could not move far enough to tinkle 
its bell. 

A midday start, of course, meant another short 
stage, even without further recurrence of trail- 
trouble. 

The valley floor began to tilt downward more 
rapidly a mile below camp, and from there on the 
improved drainage of the flats made for less mud. 
There were difficulties of one kind or another right 
along, but no serious obstacle appeared until we were 
brought up short at the upper side of a great slide 
of broken rock thrown all the way across the valley— 
probably the prank of an ancient glacier. 

With the unfordable lake dammed back where the 

[208 ] 


VLAdVMNOS JHL 40 Guoa ANDOU ‘HONOU V 


fuvg ‘uowsy uorskg fo ksazanoy 








VIdVMNNS 40 GVH WOW VASVEVHLY LNOAOK 


uDUaaay “yy *T XQ o,0yg 





DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


slide blocked the river barring a detour to the right, 
and the mountain side appearing too rough and steep 
to allow passage to the left, there seemed nothing to 
do but try to take the pack-train across that hundred 
yard-wide barrier of sharp-edged, up-tossed boul- 
ders. ‘“Soapy” shook his head dubiously, and then 
began building a trail by carrying small rocks and 
throwing them in the cracks between the big ones. 
A solid blocking of the worst of these holes was the 
only possible way in which the horses could be pre- 
vented from slipping through and breaking their 
legs. 

Harmon, setting up his tripod, prepared to reap 
what compensation he could from adversity by mak- 
ing a movie shot of the precarious passage. There 
was no question about its making wonderful action 
stuff, but inevitably at a heavy price. But since the 
price would have to be paid anyway, it was only 
good business to make a record of the transaction. 

After an hour’s work carrying and fitting rocks 
had made it evident that the building of even the most 
primitive trail across the slide might well take us the 
rest of the day, “Soapy” gave up and announced 
that it would be easier to cut a way through the tim- 
ber of the western mountain side. We were con- 
firmed in this decision when dips into the close- 


[209 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


growing timber at several points revealed unmistak- 
able signs of the previous passage of a pack-train. 
Cut logs, fragments of pack-covers and horse-hair 
rubbed into the bark of trees told the story of a hard 
but apparently successful fight. Many trees which 
had fallen since the former traverse would have to 
be cut out, but this was nothing compared to the 
labour and the risk of venturing over the rock-slide. 

We bogged several horses in crossing the over- 
flowed flat forming the western section of the floor 
of the valley, but after that it was just the slow, te- 
dious labor of clearing a way ahead. This was no 
worse than the work we had had on the slope above 
the flooded lower Alexandra, and the horses—with 
lighter packs—were now under better control. The 
whole outfit was down into the open below the slide 
in less than an hour. 

The river, which, after being dammed back by the 
slide above, came tumbling down over that obstruc- 
tion in a noisy cascade, now flowed in a narrow, 
boulder-choked channel too dangerous to ford. This 
was unfortunate, as the eastern bank appeared to of- 
fer much easier and more open going than the narrow 
bench to which our line of progress was restricted. 
Our map, indeed, even indicated that there was a 
trail leading down the Sunwapta from Jonas Creek. 


[210] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


When our glasses revealed blazes on occasional trees 
fifty yards back from the farther bank it appeared 
probable that there might actually be some sort of 
path there. 

When the mountain wall advanced to meet the 
river a mile below the slide, no alternative remained 
but that of fording. Picking the least unfavourable 
place with much care, we put the pack-train in where 
a muffled “chunkity-chunk” from the swirling depths 
of the milky glacier water told of boulders complain- 
ing because they could not find a resting place in 
the impetuous current. 

Everything considered, I am inclined to rate this 
as our most dangerous crossing, not excluding the 
two fords among the rolling boulders of Castleguard 
River. ‘The water, lapping but a few inches above 
the bellies of the horses on the lower side, almost 
surged over the backs where it struck them from 
above. ‘This terrific pressure, and the fact that the 
staggering animals had to prod with their hoofs at 
every step between boulders which were rolling or 
in precarious balance, conspired to make the passage 
a matter of touch-and-go from bank to bank. 

As had previously happened on Saskatchewan 
Glacier, the sense of really grave danger seemed to 
make the horses forget their cussedness and give the 


[211] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


best that was in them to the serious work in hand. 
Carelessness or stubbornness had been responsible 
for their being swept down in many an easier ford 
than this one. Now, however, something seemed to 
make them comprehend that the loss of footing in 
that wild welter of foam and rolled boulders would 
be fatal—that nothing could save them from bump- 
ing down half a mile of rapids that were near- 
cascades. 

- And so we crossed without a single horse losing 
the footing that would have been the prelude to dis- 
aster. I felt the spirited “Belle” quivering under 
me as she fumbled with an explorative hoof for every 
step. But not once did she balk, or even hesitate 
long enough to throw confusion into the tense string 
behind. 

It was with real relief that we watched the last 
horse clamber up the bank and shake the water out 
of dripping tail and mane. One bad stumble would 
have meant that the recovery of even the pack was 
up to our finding the body of the animal which had 
borne it. Nor is a roll among boulders, tangled up 
among the legs of his floundering mount, a thing 
lightly to be courted even by aman. One should be 
careful, of course, to ride with his feet free during a 
bad crossing; but a roll among the rocks of a rapid 


[212] 


aGIAIG IVLNANILNOO OL AATIVA VEVHO AHL dl ONIAOOT 


uDWaady “3 “JT %qQ 004d 





VUSVEVHLY WOW AVAd VAVHO GNV YNOW MOv1a 
UDUWAIAT “ST “JT Q oJoYd 


Sirah ai ve 





DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


with a kicking horse is not a pleasure jaunt, even 
without the complication of being linked by a 
stirrup-jammed foot and left to fight it out like two 
cats over a clothes-line. Kicking is one of the sev- 
eral things that a horse does better than a man. 

We were a good deal concerned about the dogs at 
this crossing. ‘There was no chance of their being 
able to stick on a swaying pack in such rough going; 
nor was any of the five of us likely to have a free arm 
to crook around a canine passenger, as I had done 
at the Saskatchewan with “Tip.” There was noth- 
ing left but for them to fight it out, “every dog for 
himself and the river take the hindmost,” slightly to 
paraphrase the ancient saying. 

The game pair surely made a brave swim of it, es- 
pecially “Tip,” who had been endowed with nothing 
comparable to “Buster’s’” formidable equipment of 
strength and courage. Jumping in far up on the 
western bank, they were swept down through the 
line of the wallowing horses—fortunately, without 
being trampled underfoot—finally to bring up in an 
eddy lapping the eastern bank a hundred yards be- 
low. 

That narrow run of back-current came in a very 
convenient place. Carried beyond the rocky ledge 
which formed it, our pets must have been drawn into 


[213] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


a series of chutes and whirlpools where their fate 
would have been considerably in doubt. “Buster,” I 
am inclined to believe, would finally have crawled 
out with his flaming life-spark still unquenched, but 
more likely than not on the opposite side of an un- 
broken run of rapids, where there would have been 
no way of reaching him. 

“Tip,” less robust of heart and body than the 
husky, would have needed another “brain-wave” to 
bring him out alive. 

With the day already far advanced, we decided to 
camp at the first favourable site that offered, leaving 
a search for the trail to go over to the morrow. A 
half-hour later we were setting up the tepee on the 
grassy, timbered island, formed by the splitting of 
the river into two rocky channels by a huge log-jam. 

The dogs charged out through the tepee door sev- 
eral times during the night, but, with the roar of the 
rapid rising from either side, we gave little heed to 
their violent spasms of barking. In the morning we 
found the tracks of four deer, two caribou and a 
moose pressed into the plastic mud of the lower lip 
of the island. The caribou had plunged into the 
main channel of the river—probably frightened by 
the onslaught of the dogs—and swum to the opposite 
bank. With a ten-mile current rushing down the 


[214] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


flooded stream, it must have taken a vigorous bit 
of pawing to land above the under-suck of a jutting 
log-jam fifty yards below. I should never have 
dared to work on so narrow a margin in swimming a 
horse. 

Packed up for an early start in the morning, a fifty- 
yard clamber up the steep side of the bench flank- 
ing the eastern side of the valley brought us to a 
broad, even swath cut out through the timber. 
Boggy in many spots and plainly very little travelled, 
this was still the first thing worthy of the name of 
trail we had touched since leaving Lake Louise. 
The trees had been cut and thrown back out of the 
way, there were “corduroys” of well-fitted logs at 
the worst seepages, and, running along on one side, 
was the wire of what had once been a telephone line. 

Pushing the horses at a brisk pace along what 
seemed (by comparison with what we had been trav- 
ersing) almost a paved highway, we reached the 
Sunwapta ranger’s station early in the afternoon. 
The cabin appeared to have been unoccupied for 
some time, but an entry in the register disclosed the 
fact that it had been visited, a fortnight previously, 
by a party which had been climbing mountains near 
the head of the Athabaska. Howard Palmer, en- 
gineer, author and alpinist, and Conrad Kain, Aus- 


[215] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


trian guide, were among the well known names on 
the pencilled list. 

Definite word that an outfit had been in to the 
head of the Athabaska so recently was good news 
for us. It meant that the route had been traversed at 
least once in both directions, and that much cutting 
and clearing, which otherwise would have fallen to 
our own axes, had already been done. 

We were sorry to have missed foregathering with 
so notable a party of mountaineers. Howard Pal- 
mer, who has climbed much in and mapped consid- 
erable areas of the Selkirks, I had known through 
correspondence since my voyage down the Big Bend 
of the Columbia in 1920. Conrad Kain, a mountain 
companion of Harmon’s for many seasons, I had met 
at the Lake of the Hanging Glacier just before start- 
ing down the Columbia. It was he, indeed, who 
pitched over the cliff the frozen goat which came 
so near to wiping Harmon off the face of Horse 
Thief Glacier, as related in the chapter on scenic 
work. | 

Two hundred yards below the rangers’ station, 
where a sign marked “To Fortress Lake” pointed to- 
ward a straggling path disappearing up a rocky 
slope, we turned our backs on the open white man’s 
trail which ran on to Jasper, and resumed once 


[216] 


DOWN THE SUNWAPTA 


more the way that had been blazed by the Indian. 

Crossing the gorge of the Sunwapta on a crudely 
but solidly-built log bridge picturesquely located 
just below a thirty-foot fall, we climbed a low divide 
and descended, through the close-growing timber 
clothing the slopes of a series of terrace-like benches, 
to the banks of the Athabaska. Two miles farther 
up-stream, where a narrow neck of alluvial deposit 
separated a broad overflow lake from the flood-high 
river, we halted for the night. Marks on rotting 
fragments of pack-boxes indicated that a government 
surveying party had camped on the same spot many 
years before. 


[217] 


CHAPTER X 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


ON the Athabaska we were back again close under 
the eaves of the roof of the Continental Divide. 
Waters from the glaciers crowning the lofty heights 
above our camp drained both to the Pacific and to 
the Arctic. ‘Towering against the northwestern sky- 
line were the snows of the historic peaks of Brown 
and Hooker, twin sentinels of old Athabaska Pass. 
Still farther north, but out of our present line of 
vision, was the fine summit recently named Edith 
Cavell. Black Monks and Chaba Peak were to 
the southwest of us, with Columbia, Alberta, King 
Edward, The Twins, and others of the great group of 
peaks flanking the Columbia Icefield on the north, 
Waiting to appear as we pushed south up the Atha- 
baska. 

As our initial camp on the Athabaska was located 
at the first point yet touched to which there was a 
practical certainty of our subsequent return, we took 
advantage of the opportunity to leave there every- 
thing in the outfit not likely to be needed on our jour- 
ney to the head of the river. This consisted mostly 


[218] 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


of exposed film and heavy clothing brought along for 
the return journey to Banff through the early winter 
snows. Made into a compact bundle and suspended 
by spare radio antenna wire from the apex of a 
stout tripod, ‘‘Soapy” declared the cache was proof 
“"gainst everything but wolverines, and mebbe him.” 

If there were provisions in the bundle, and espe- 
cially bacon or other meat, the packers said it would 
only be a question of time until a savage and re- 
sourceful wolverine would contrive to worry off the 
wire and rip the contents wide open. As food was 
the one thing above all others that we could not af- 
ford to leave behind, there was no chance that pred- 
atory prowlers would be attracted by any odour more 
tempting than that of celluloid. 

With the river, swollen by the meltage incident to 
another succession of unseasonably hot days, out of 
its banks and spreading over the flats, we had wet 
though not especially boggy going all the way to the 
mouth of the Chaba. This was about four miles. 

Above the Chaba, where the route to Fortress Lake 
branches off toward the west, the valley of the Atha- 
baska narrows almost to a canyon, with the river 
roaring down it in an unbroken succession of rough 
rapids. Along here we kept to the east bank, fol- 
lowing as well as we could the trail traversed and 


[219] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


partially cleared by the mountain-climbing party a 
few weeks earlier. This led most of the way over 
benches black with burned dead-falls. Descent to 
the flooded river level was only made where a cliff 
or impassable ravine blocked the way over the more 
solid ground above. 

Most of our trouble came in fording the narrow, 
deep mouths of torrents pouring down from the 
mountain side. Boulder-choked and steep-banked, 
with the murky glacial water making it impossible 
to judge depth or the character of bottom, these 
harmless-looking holes proved dangerous pitfalls for 
horses. Packs had repeatedly to be removed in ex- 
tricating mired animals, and both broken backs and 
broken legs were always imminent possibilities. 

With both human and equine members of the out- 
fit thoroughly exhausted from the rough, punishing 
work, we were glad to make early camp at the first 
point reached where there was grass for the horses 
and a level spot for the tepee. | 

We were on the way early the next morning, hope- 
ful of reaching the site of our base-camp before 
nightfall. A mile of pulling and hauling through 
the usual rocks and fallen timber brought us out to 
a point where the valley widened to half a mile or 

[220] 


sti ecmmeatatentcee — 














Photo by L. R. Freeman 





IN ABOVE JUNCTION OF CHABA AND ATHABASKA 





Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 


GORGE BELOW ATHABASKA FALLS 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


more, and here we welcomed the chance to head 
straight up the flats toward our destination. 

The swollen river, sweeping across the floor of the 
valley in wide curves, blocked our way repeatedly. 
The current was deep and swift, but—with a solid 
bottom of gravel and small rocks underfoot—never 
dangerous. Only once were the horses swimming 
at a ford, and that was for a very short distance. 
Progress was rapid and steady from the moment we 
broke free from the clutches of the entangling tim- 
ber and narrowed our problem down to fighting it 
out with the river in the open. 

Just as when nearing the Columbia mer de glace 
by the Alexandra, we again found ourselves entering 
a kingdom of ice and snow. ‘These were only in 
evidence afar, however. Where we toiled up the 
hot valley floor water was the dominant element. 
Waterfalls, sparkling like diamond necklaces, ringed 
every jutting headland; cascades, churned white as 
milk, streaked every slope. We were at the climax 
of the last of the several great thaws of a remarkable 
summer. | 

Mount Columbia, the tip of the snowy pinnacle 
of which we had seen for a moment in crossing a high 
bench above the Chaba the previous afternoon, 


[221] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


played hide-and-seek with us all day. This was tra- 
ditional Columbia tactics); Harmon explained—it 
had been pulling this ‘‘now-you-see-me-and-now- 
you-don’t” stuff ever since it was discovered. ‘The 
trick did not worry him much, he said, as he was 
quite prepared to employ his familiar siege strat- 
egy—that of sitting down and waiting for a complete 
capitulation. 

We were riding side by side up the valley when 
Harmon made this confident announcement of 
policy, so there was really no wood to touch to pro- 
pitiate the ever jealous Master of Futurities. Pos- 
sibly Harmon had never been sufficiently chastened 
to learn that one ought never to omit doing that sort 
of thing. I muttered a pious Mohammedan “Imsl- 
allah,” but even that could avail naught for my rash 
companion. ‘The time was near when he had to 
learn by bitter experience that it is not well to fling 
challenges for a bout at waiting in the teeth of such 
a practised old waitress as Mount Columbia. What 
was there in a bare fortnight’s grub supply upon 
which to base a siege of a mountain to which a mil- 
lion years was no more than the click of a focal-plane 
shutter P 

I really intended to expostulate with Harmon and 
try to persuade him to do something in a propitiary 


[222] 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


way before it was too late. J was just beginning to 
expostulate, indeed, when poor little “Tip,” carried 
down by the current, was trodden upon by one of the 
pack-horses, and we had to give our attention to his 
crushed and bleeding paw. 

Early in the afternoon we reached what appeared 
to have been the base-camp of the mountain-climbing 
party. With three or four miles of open flat still 
running on to where the river headed in glaciers 
under Columbia and ‘King Edward, we were puz- 
zled at first as to why camp should have been made 
so far away. When “Soapy” came back from a 
scouting canter over the flats and along the mountain- 
sides, the reason was made plain. Lack of forage 
farther up the narrowing valley accounted for the 
location of the camp where it was. It had been 
pitched literally at “last grass.” 

It was a comforable spot, well sheltered from the 
winds from the icefield by a thickly-timbered island 
curving around it to the west and south. Wood was 
at the door of the tepee, with water close at hand 
both above and below. ‘Two trees, very favourably 
placed as to direction and unusually high for so near 
timber-line, were ideal for the radio aerial. 

Added to these utilitarian advantages was the 
promise of rare beauty of setting—when the clouds 


[223] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


lifted. And that—since it was not the stormy time 
of year—would be only a matter of two or three days 
at the outside. Harmon—and all the rest of us, for 
that matter—had no apprehension at all on the 
weather score. 

Then followed eight days of futile waiting—an 
interval in some ways more trying than our worst 
spells of travel in mud and water. We were vouch- 
safed one unforgettable view of the slender pinnacle 
of the mountain we had come so far to photograph, 
with the snowy summit suffused in the golden-pink 
glow of the sun that set on the day of our arrival. 
Then the most beautiful peak of the whole North 
American Rockies system settled down to the pro- 
vocative tactics which had made it a mountain of 
mystery since the day of its discovery. 

One day it was a chaste madonna, raising an ador- 
ing face behind a dusky veil that barely revealed a 
misty outline of its form. Another it was a dancer 
of fire and verve, lifting a tantalizing skirt to show 
dimpling knees twinkling in the froth of billowing 
chiffon, or poking a coquettishly bared shoulder 
from behind a masking screen. A third day, with 
an opaque stratum of cloud cutting off all but its up- 
per and lower extremes, it leered brazenly after the 


[224] 


TIVIVAV OIGVAY ALON—VXUSVAVHLY “LW YFGNN ANIT AWAEWIL LV dWVO UNO 


UDWMIaIAT “3T “JT XQ 0104 








Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 


WAITING FOR THE FIRST CLASH 





UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


manner of the chorus girl of a burlesque dancing in 
a barrel. 

This was all good movie stuff, as far as it went; but 
it was the classic “‘altogether” that we wanted for the 
permanent record of the stills. 

The half-famished horses were munching willow- 
bark and leaves in place of the grass already gnawed 
to the roots. Our own salt, sugar and canned goods 
were entirely gone, with only a much-reduced ration 
of bacon, flour and musty oat-meal remaining. Still 
we hung on, waiting for our perverse minx of the 
mountain to exhaust her whimseys and, as “Soapy”’ 
put it, “give us an honest-to-goodness look-see.” 

By way of reward for our patience, what should 
she do but take the veil completely? With a four- 
day blizzard from the north reducing the width of 
our world to a bare fifty feet from the tepee door, 
we went right on waiting, cheered by the wonder of 
lighting which we told ourselves simply had to come 
when the proverbial sunshine followed the storm. 

But we could not hide from ourselves the fact that 
old Mistress Columbia had picked up our lightly- 
flung gauntlet and was giving us siege-for-siege. 
And we had only eight days’ rations left on which to 
complete the siege and reach Jasper, while old Co- 


[225] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


lumbia, who needed only snow to live on anyhow, 
was getting more of it every minute! 

It was in these last stormy days—the dark before 
the dawn, so to speak—that our radiola furnished us 
with the greatest enjoyment and comfort. There 
in our wretched little camp on the Arctic side of the 
divide, with the snow banked two feet high against 
the windward side of the tepee and the roar from the 
blizzard-tossed trees rising at times to a crescendo 
that drowned our voices, that blessed little black box 
reached up and teased things out of the ether in a 
way we had never had them before, even at Atha- 
baska Glacier. 

The fact that they had to reach us across the whole 
hundred and fifty square miles of the Columbia Ice- 
field, and over the tops of several of the highest peaks 
in the Canadian Rockies, seemed to make no differ- 
ence atall. Or if these things did make a difference, 
it was by way of improvement. It is probable, how- 
ever, that the remarkable radio reception we experi- 
enced at the head of the Athabaska was due more to 
the fact that, for the first and last time in the whole 
course of the trip, we had ample leisure in which to 
string up the aerial carefully and give the set a fair 
chance. With similar attention elsewhere, doubt- 
less it would have performed just as well. 


[226] 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


How the amazing little box could still go on with 
its tricks after the bangings and sousings it had re- 
ceived is one of the unsolved mysteries of the ex- 
pedition, along with “Tip’s” miraculous ‘“second- 
sightedness” in the matter of topography hitherto 
unknown to him. There still appear to be a few 
things in heaven and earth undreamed of in the phi- 
losophy of Horatio. 

One of our most interesting radio experiences at 
the head of the Athabaska was that of picking up the 
Wills-Firpo prize-fight during daylight. It was 
not storming at the time, but the weather was cloudy, 
with a threat of snow at any moment. There was no 
question that it was snowing on all the higher peaks 
and the Columbia Icefield. 

We did not even know that the fight was scheduled 
to take place, but had no trouble in deciding what 
was afoot on cutting into some such announcement 
as, ‘Wills stopped the ‘Wild Bull of the Pampas’ 
with a stiff upper-cut to the jaw.”’ When the round 
closed we learned that we had been hearing a blow- 
by-blow account of the fight, described from the 
ringside and re-broadcast by KFKX of Hastings. 

That accounted for a wild, pulsating roar, running 
like an obbligato through the terse announcements of 
the results of each blow. It was not the howling of 


[227] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


the intervening storm but only that of the excited 
mob in the amphitheatre. 

We had cut in at about the fifth round, and had 
followed the milling to the seventh or eighth, when 
a new sort of roar began to drown that of the cheer- 
ing fans. ‘“Soapy” suggested it might be the sound 
of a knock-out, adding that he wouldn’t be too sure 
about it, as he had never heard one before. Yet a 
knock-out it proved to be, though a somewhat differ- 
ent one than the wise old packer intended. 

The mysterious roar was quickly localized, re- 
solving itself into the crashing of underbrush, wild 
snortings and the excited yelpings of dogs in full 
cry. An instant later the pack-box containing the 
Radiola and batteries was jerked from the pile of 
saddles upon which it had been set and dragged vio- 
lently against the side of the tepee. The head- 
phones were yanked from our ears. 

Rushing outside, we were just in time to see a 
speeding bull caribou disappearing into the timber, 
with the dogs yapping at his heels. Why they had 
been able to keep so close to their quarry did not be- 
come quite clear until we discovered that the ani- 
mal was running under a handicap—that of a couple 
of hundred feet of the trailing wire of our wrecked 
antenna. | 


[228] 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


What had happened was simple enough, once we 
had time to figure it out. The dogs had started the 
big bull in the flats to the west of our sheltering 
island. Dashing into the thick timber of the latter, 
the frightened animal had come crashing out into 
our camp, snagging the lead from the antenna on the 
prongs of his wide-spread antlers as he rushed by 
the tepee. 

We found all of the looted wire inside of a quarter 
of a mile, but not in time to string it up again to 
catch any more of the blow-by-blow story of the 
Wills-Firpo argument. 

Both KGO and CKCD gave us detailed accounts 
of the fight by rounds when they came in that night. 
It was agreed that Wills had all the best of it, though 
a good deal of awe and admiration appeared to have 
been aroused by the “‘devastating rushes of the ‘Wild 
Bull of the Pampas.’”” Which led ‘“‘Soapy” to ob- 
serve (and not without point, one must admit) that 
if the rushes of “Wild Bull of the Pampas” had any- 
thing on those of the “Wild Bull of the Athabaska,” 
he couldn’t figure where the nigger had a look-in. 
Then, as a possibly clarifying afterthought, he 
added: ‘‘Mebbe they just raise rushier bulls here- 
abouts.” 

Another memorable radio event was the listening- 


[229] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


in on the broadcasting by KGO of a complete opera 
rehearsal from the Capital Theatre, San Francisco. 
It was the newly-formed San Francisco Opera Com- 
pany, about to inaugurate its autumn season at the 
Municipal Auditorium. Advised some days in ad- 
vance of what was planned, we were all tuned-in and 
waiting when the program started. ° 

There was something strangely familiar in the 
clear, ringing voice of the special announcer of the 
evening, and it was not long before I felt sure I had 
recognized it as that of my old college friend of 
Stanford, Charley Field, now Editor of Sunset. I 
had spent six weeks on a commission with Field in 
China some years previously, and so had some line 
on every trick in his oratorical reportoire. An in- 
term announcement by the regular. KGO man, 
thanking “Mr. Charles K. Field of Sunset Maga- 
zine and the Bohemian Club for his masterly aerial 
conducting,” shortly confirmed my suspicions. 

The solos and other numbers by the stars came in 
with great clearness. The singing of the chorus had 
a muffled, diffused sound, that was possibly due to 
the fact that special provision had not been made for 
concentrating it before passing on to the microphone. 

One little unrehearsed incident was rather amus- 
ing, even ata distance. Field, after introducing one 


[230] 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


of the stars as Madame something, was called sharply 
to account when the temperamental prima donna 
took the air herself to say it was a mistake to prefix 
Madame or any other foreign title to her name. She 
was just a simple American girl—just plain Bridget 
Maloney. Or was it Eikenstein, or Pirelli, or De- 
lysia, or Vodkavich? In any event, it was just some 
plain, simple old Yankee name that there was no pos- 
sibility of mistaking. 

Charley Field is blessed with a rare and delicate 
sense of humour. If I didn’t catch his chuckle after 
that sally it was because he put a hand over his 
twitching mouth and turned away from the micro- 
phone. 

My own great personal thrill from the radio came 
the night one of my carrier pigeon letters was read 
back to me over the air. This had gone out by a 
bird released at Castleguard, addressed to Walter 
Woehlke, Managing Editor of Sunset, with some 
corrections for one of a series of articles he was run- 
ning on my Colorado River voyage. It also men- 
tioned the names of several stations we had just heard 
over the radio. 

Arriving at its bearer’s home cote in Banff, the 
wrinkled wisp of paper with my message typed upon 
it was forwarded on to its destination by mail. 


[231] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Woehlke promptly handed it to his colleague, Joseph 
Jackson, who was just leaving for Oakland to give 
one of his regular literary talks as a part of KGO’s 
Monday night “Educational Program.” 

Jackson, when his turn came, told his hearers in 
brief outline of our mountain expedition, and read 
them my letter. Then, expressing the hope that I 
was listening-in, he told me the corrections I desired 
had been made. Finally, he gave a very kindly re- 
view of my “Down the Grand Canyon,” the first 
news I had that the book was off the press some 
weeks earlier than originally scheduled. 

But diverting as it was—and as practically useful 
in keeping our minds from dwelling too much upon 
what finally appeared to be the complete failure of 
our attempt to photograph Mount Columbia from 
the north—neither the horses nor ourselves could 
eat the radio. The plight of the pack animals was 
even more serious than our own. We had plenty of 
fresh meat, and something less than a half ration of 
flour, bacon and coffee. The horses had been starv- 
ing for six days so far as grass was concerned, with 
leaves and bark not doing much more than keeping 
them alive. 

When, on the evening of the seventh day of our 
futile vigil, the weather bulletins broadcast by the 


[232] 


UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


Pacific Coast radio stations forecast another general 
storm moving in from the ocean, we had to confess 
ourselves beaten. ‘‘Soapy,”’ 
horses were likely to bolt for the lower valley at any 


moment, announced that we would have to leave 


saying that the hungry 


the following day if we wanted to have the use of 
pack and saddle animals. 

Harmon, who had been the most hopeful member 
of the party from the outset, threw up the sponge in 
the morning when the sunshine, passing by the still 
cloud-veiled mountain peak, came only to spatter 
the snowy valley with a spurious golden flood. 
Packing his cameras in great dejection, he told 
“Soapy” to get the pack-train under way as soon as 
possible. It took some argument on my part to per- 
suade him that no time would be lost if the two of 
us, letting the men and horses go on, remained to 
press the siege a few hours longer. 

With the gaunt, hollow-eyed horses barely able to 
totter under the depleted loads, the pack-train set 
off down the valley at noon of September 25th. In 
spite of the fact the sky was overcast and threatening 
another storm, Harmon and J, with our saddle ani- 
mals and the horse packing the cameras, remained 
behind on the off chance of the altogether improb- 
able clear-up. Pushing up the valley at a leisurely 


[233] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


pace, we reached a sheltered point two miles from 
the base of the mountain, ate our lunch and wae 
for something to turn up. 

At three-thirty, with a grey barrier of mist still 
masking the mountains to the southward, it began to 
look as if our only diversion was going to come from 
a belligerent bull caribou, who made a series of short, 
broken rushes in our direction by way of showing 
his prowess to a small bunch of palpably admiring 
cows. 

Then, suddenly and without warning, the veiling 
clouds fell away like a parted curtain and Mistress 
Columbia, garbed in a clinging mantle of new- 
fallen snow, radiant in the calcium-like glow of the 
low but brilliant afternoon sun, stood bowing, “At 
your Service!” 

Both light and setting were beyond anything we 
had dared hope for—sparkling side-shafts of sun- 
shine, with just enough clouds for background and 
shadows. 

It lasted for just forty minutes,—ever changing 
but ever beautiful,—and in that time we exposed still 
negatives at the rate of one a minute, besides run- 
ning four hundred feet of film through the movie 
cameras. ‘The black rectangles of paper torn from 
Harmon’s film-packs were piled up behind his tri- 


[234] 





Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 


WHEN THE SUN FIRST BROKE THROUGH ON MT. COLUMBIA 


ANVT SSAULYOA AO TIVM AMONS AHL 


UDUIIAT “9 “TJ vq 040Yd 








Photo by L. R. Freeman 


LOOKING DOWN TO WEST (WOOD RIVER) END OF FORTRESS LAKE 


SAV LHOId 40 GN FHL LY ATLNVW NO710 SLI ONIGGIHS (Laad b6z‘z1) VIAWNI00 “LW 


fuvg ‘uomsnyy uortg fo dsajinoy 





UP AND DOWN THE ATHABASKA 


pods like the brass shells around a hard-pumped 
machine-gun at the end of a battle. 

And a battle this had been, in a sense—a battle in 
which, after tasting all the bitterness of defeat, we 
had snatched a golden victory at the last moment. 
That, as I think of it now, was the high moment of 
the trip. 

The sooty pall of nimbus which rolled down from 
the north to snuff out the radiance streaming over 
Columbia pelted us with a spatter of snow-flakes. 
Packing up the cameras, we rode out of the timber 
fifteen minutes later into the teeth of a nascent baby 
blizzard. 

Fortunately—with heavy mittens, fur caps and 
parkas—we were well prepared for such an on- 
slaught and so did not have to seek shelter. The 
horses were a bit at sea until they struck the trail of 
their mates; then they bent their heads to the gale 
and plugged doggedly on down the valley. With 
the river at a low stage from the cold, the fords were 
easy. 

The storm ceased just before dark, giving us rather 
a better chance for the last mile into camp through 
fallen timber. 

On one of the three days which we camped at the 
mouth of the Chaba, to give the horses a chance to 


[235] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


graze and recover their strength, we took the oppor- 
tunity to make a hurried side-trip to historic Fort- 
ress Lake. This lovely body of water, which drains 
both ways from its seat on the continental divide, was 
known to the Hudson’s Bay voyageurs and fre- 
quently trapped in later years. In the present cen- 
tury it has probably not averaged the visit of an out- 
fit a year. 

The timber on the British Columbia side was 
finer than any other we had seen in the Rockies. 

Leaving the mouth of the Chaba on September 
29th with light packs, we reached Jasper on the af- 
ternoon of October 1st. The Athabaska was fol- 
lowed fairly closely all the way, the last two days 
over a well cut-out trail. Below the mouth of the 
Whirlpool we were on the old transcontinental trail 
of the Hudson’s Bay traders. 

Some of the cuttings we examined may well have 
been stumps from one of the very earliest clearings. 
They looked fully as old as a number of rotting 
stumps of great size—doubtless left by the same 
axes—which had thrilled me in passing the site of 
Boat Encampment, at the apex of the Big Bend of 
the Columbia, four years previously. 


[236] 


CHAPTER XI 


BACK THROUGH THE SNOWS TO BANFF 


WE were eating little but dried fruit and lumpy 
“dough-gods”—mixed without baking-powder or 
salt—the last two or three days down the Athabaska. 
After this frugal diet, it was with a zest which only 
a man who has been underfed in the open for weeks 
can understand, that we sat down to a feast prepared 
to celebrate our arrival in Jasper. The Jackmans, 
old friends and trail companions of Harmon, were 
sponsors of the felicitous affair, which they had been 
planning ever since word had come that we were 
shortly to arrive from the south. 

I shall not attempt to list what the trail-hungry 
pair of us consumed, but I remember three helpings 
of lamb and mint sauce, and at least an equal number 
of ice cream and a wonderful thing, imported from 
Vancouver but called a “Boston Cream Cake.” The 
quivering whorl of that whipped-cream pinnacle I 
shall remember in steel-sharp relief when the vision 
of the snowy crest of Mount Columbia has faded to 
the dimness of ancient tapestry. 

The successful photographs of Mount Columbia 


[237] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


and the head of the Athabaska completed the pic- 
ture program as originally laid out, leaving the re- 
turn of the pack-train to Banff as the main problem 
to be considered. 

With the winter’s snows already lying deep in the 
higher valleys and passes, no time was lost in Jasper. 
We attended to the shipping of exposed film the af- 
ternoon of our arrival, and to reprovisioning and the 
purchase of heavier winter clothes the following 
morning. ‘That left us free to depart early in the af- 
ternoon of October 2nd. The men and the horses 
cantered off at one o’clock, leaving Harmon and me 
to finish our mail and follow on as convenient. 

Just as we rode out of town the special train of the 
Prince of Wales pulled into the station, the party 
entering waiting autos at once for the ride to quarters 
prepared for them in Jasper Lodge. As we were 
passing the Lodge an hour later, a friend of Har- 
mon, stopping to shake hands, told him that the royal 
guest had gone for a walk down the road we were 
following, and that we might expect to meet him 
returning. 

This was interesting news. I had met the Prince 
twice previously—once at his regimental mess at the 
Front in France, and later aboard my ship at Ros- 
syth. ‘This would be a fine chance to renew old ac- 


[238] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


quaintance, I told myself, and especially to learn 
something of the way things had gone at the Inter- 
national polo matches at Meadowbrook. The Prince 
had been there in person, while we had nothing but 
a brief account over the radio. One was not con- 
strained to meticulous observance of court etiquette 
in the northern Rockies, I assured Harmon confi- 
dently as we trotted along beside the winding forest 
road. 

I have no doubt that we would have had a very 
nice little yarn there in the forest—except for one 
thing. I had failed to reckon with my six weeks’ 
growth of whiskers, which had spread to proportions 
positively Bolshevikian. I understood better what 
happened when the radio informed us, a night or two 
later, that there had been renewed rumours of plots 
against the life of the Prince of Wales and that he 
was being guarded more closely as a consequence. 

Presently the rounding of a bend of the road re- 
vealed the royal hiking party close at hand. The 
Prince, garbed in golf togs, was striding with energy 
a pace in advance of three officers in uniform, one of 
whom had an empty sleeve. 

Two of the officers instantly clapped hands to side- 
pockets and came on, boring me with concentrated 
frowns of suspicion. ‘The Prince did not falter in 


[239] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


his stride, but both Harmon and I recalled later that 
his jaw dropped perceptibly, as if the surprise of see- 
ing the vicious apparition looming up ahead had not 
been entirely a pleasant one. Certainly there was no 
suggestion on his serious face of the frank, boyish 
smile I had rarely seen it without before in public. 

Sensing at once that smock-clad individuals with 
Bolsheviki whiskers were distinctly persona non 
grata with at least the determined young men who 
had the safety of young Prince Charming in their 
capable hands, I kicked a heel into the ribs of the 
half-reined-in “La Belle” and sent her ahead at a 
trot. Incapable of registering “Innocence of In- 
tention” with the only phiz available at the moment, 
I did the best I could with my hands. I did not 
quite go to the length of raising them above my head 
as we met and passed, but both of them were con- 
spicuously in sight. Nor was either of them near a 
side-pocket, which was more than at least two of 
the other group could say. 3 

I am inclined to think I was the only one of the 
sextette to get any real kick out of the episode. The 
Prince’s nod of greeting was curt and rather nervous. 
Two of the officers did not nod the breadth of an eye- 
lash. Harmon was too offended, for the moment, by 
the coldness of the royal greeting to see the funny 


[240] 


aNVT ANOVIVN 


upuiaaty “yy “JT fq o,oyd 





a 





Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff 


CAMP NEAR HEAD OF MALIGNE LAKE 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


side of it. Even my own whisker-bristling grin was 
slightly forced. Frowning young men with hands 
in their pistol pockets are just a bit destructive of 
aplomb and savoir faire. 

We found our camp pitched for the night at 
Maligne River, near where the auto road comes to 
an end. ‘The next day we ascended along the river 
to the outlet of Medicine Lake, which we skirted 
Over a snowy trail to camp at its upper end. ‘This 
strange body of water, owing apparently to the fact 
that its bottom is composed of broken rocks, is bank- 
full only during the season of spring thaws. The 
rest of the year, with the underground drainage of 
greater volume than the inflows, it sinks to a level 
fifty feet or more below its high mark of the spring. 
During most of the year nearly all the flow of lower 
Maligne River runs by subterranean channels from 
the bottom of Medicine Lake. 

Half a day from Medicine Lake brought us out 
to the meadows at the lower end of Maligne. Here, 
both to rest the horses for the hard work in prospect 
over the snowy passes and to photograph one of the 
most beautiful lakes of the Canadian Rockies, we 
remained three days. 

With the tepee erected in one of the most pictur- 
esque settings of the whole trip, we took the occa- 


[241] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


sion to make a number of movie camp-shots, long 
deferred for want of the elusive synchronisation of 
favourable weather and location. The esoteric mys- 
teries of setting up the tepee itself were shown in one 
of these shots; in others, the shoeing and packing 
of horses and the inner workings of the camp cuisine. 

As Maligne is notorious for its stormy weather, 
we were not very sanguine on the score of having 
really first-rate lighting for scenic shots so late in 
the year. But the lucky star which had served us 
so well at Castleguard, Saskatchewan Glacier and 
Mount Columbia again interposed in our behalf. 
The brilliant side-lighting on glaciers and mountain 
walls during the brief hour we had at the head of the 
lake, between going and returning canoe voyages, 
was all and more than one was justified in expecting 
later than July or early August. 

The view up the lake from a high point half a 
mile above the Narrows, with a slender timbered 
peninsula in the foreground, the sparkling emerald 
waters in the middle distance, and snow-crowned 
mountain peaks and the blue-green ice of hanging 
glaciers reared against a vault of sapphire sky for 
a background, is one of the most perfect settings of 
its kind on the continent. 

It was at our Maligne Lake camp that the radio 


[242 ] 


HUYOHS LSAM WOW MAIA “ANVT ANOVIVN 


fuvg ‘uomsvy uorskg fo Ksazanoy 








aAXVT ANOVIVW dO SMOUNVN AAOATY 


UDWAIA “YM *T 4qQ o,0Yg 











THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


brought in the result of the first game of the World’s 
Series, won by New York after twelve innings. We 
were not set up early enough to get the play-by-play 
broadcasts, but many stations—including several 
Canadian—were willing to tell us all about it in the 
evening. 

We gave the radio several trials by daylight before 
leaving Maligne Lake, which was the last point on 
the trip where there was any chance of having time 
to spare for much beyond the regular grind of rou- 
tine. We heard parts of the speeches of General 
Pershing and Secretary of War Weeks, in connection 
I believe, with the Defense Day program. We also 
had portions of Secretary Hoover’s address to the 
Radio Congress in Washington, broadcast from 
the telephone by KGO. 

We heard the strong station KF KX of Hastings 
very frequently during the later weeks of the jour- 
ney. A change to a wave length of 291 meters, 
which we had heard announced while in camp at 
the head of the Athabaska, seemed to help us greatly 
in picking up and holding KFKX. The genial 
announcer, Bill Hays, “with Mrs. Bill at the piano,” 
was always welcome with his basso profundo solos, 
such as “Asleep in the Deep” and “Sailor Beware!” 

There was diversion, too in the little local touches 


[243] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


from Nebraska, such as the reports of corn-husking 
contests, or a plan of one of the railways to improve 
the quality of stock by trading the farmers new bulls 
for old. But when we cut into the middle of a 
KFKX program on three different occasions, each 
time to find a learned woman from the state univer- 
sity giving one of a series of six (or perhaps it was 
sixteen) discourses on Parliamentary Law, it was too 
much. When this disaster was visited upon us for 
the third time, we simply laid the head-phones down 
on the sounding-box of the pack-case and let the dogs 
harry the disturber, as they had done with the lady 
poetess from Seattle with a name like “Carry-me- 
homah.”’ 

Kipling was right. Some things are “just too 
cruel hard to bear.” 

We broke camp early on the morning of October 
7th, skirted the lower end of the lake, and began the 
long but gradual climb along upper Maligne River 
toward our first pass. Snow began falling a little 
after noon, increasing by several inches the half- 
foot already on the ground where we halted to make 
camp. We had already left far behind us the last 
bare earth—save for wind-swept cliffs and small 
patches under thick trees—we were to see for many 
days. 

[244] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


The horses, rested and strengthened by the rest and 
prime grazing afforded by the three days at Maligne 
Lake, were in fine fettle and condition. The mo- 
ment their packs were off and the inevitable back- 
scratching rolls over, they started a purposeful paw- 
ing for grass which augured encouragingly for their 
ability to forage in the deeper snows ahead. 

It was snowing again at daybreak but began clear- 
ing before breakfast was over. The cold seemed to 
be increasing, however. A movie which Harmon 
attempted to take of the horses being driven into 
their rope corral before packing was spoiled by the 
repeated condensing of moisture on the lens. Af- 
ter that we began leaving the cameras outside of 
the tepee at night in order to keep them at the 
same temperature as the air in which they were to 
be operated. 

There was a foot of snow on the trail all the way 
to timber-line, two miles above camp, and almost 
twice as much when we reached the summit of 
Maligne Pass. This made slow, tiring going, 
though the slope was not considerable on either side 
of the divide. 

A landscape of glaring, unbroken white proved 
very trying on the eyes, especially on those of 
“Soapy” and La Casse, who alternated in the lead. 


[245] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


The man breaking the trail had to keep his gaze 
continually roving over the snow for possible ob- 
stacles; the rest of us could cut down the exposure 
to the glare with close-pulled caps or by keeping the 
eyes on the horse’s head. There were supposed to 
be snow-glasses somewhere in the outfit but no one 
had thought of digging them out. 

The way down from Maligne Pass was by a very 
rough tributary of the Poboktan, which the men 
called Goat Creek. Snow-drifts and rocks, with 
little chance to find such trail as there may have 
been, turned the descent into a sort of skidding 
scramble that played havoc with pack lashings. 

We came down to the main Poboktan at a point 
about eleven miles above where that stream empties 
into the Sunwapta, a junction we had passed on our 
way down from Wilcox Pass. We now encountered 
the same trail and broken-down telephone line we 
had followed down the Sunwapta. They contin- 
ued up the valley and over a divide to Brazeau 
Lake. 

We could expect to have the benefit of the cut-out 
trail for only a few miles—unless we failed to get 
over the first high pass, of course. In that event 
there would be nothing left to do but work out to- 
ward the plains by the easiest routes available. 


[246] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


The stream of the Poboktan emerged from a 
closely-boxed canyon not far above where we came 
down to it from Maligne Pass. The avoidance of 
the gorge necessitated a long, steep climb up an icy 
slope to the bench above. Here it was that the first 
effects of the hard foraging conditions imposed by 
the snows at the camp of the previous night were 
in evidence. ‘The horses were blowing and tottering 
at the end of every forty or fifty yards. It was pos- 
sible to ease the saddle animals by ourselves walking; 
for the pack-horses all that could be done was to rest 
them at increasingly frequent intervals. 

Four miles of painful progress across a bleak, 
wind-swept plateau brought us to the valley of a 
little side stream. It was earlier than we had in- 
tended to stop, but the condition of the horses was 
always the controlling consideration. In this in- 
stance, with perfectly good intentions, we did them 
a dis-service in halting at a point where there was 
very little grass to be found even when questing nose 
and paw had cleared a way to the earth. 

Bewildered by the elusiveness of forage, the tired 
and hungry animals scattered widely during the 
night. It was one o’clock of the following after- 
noon before the last of them was rounded up again, 
and nearly three when we were ready to take the trail. 


[247] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Under the circumstances, five miles up the valley to 
the edge of timber-line was the very best we 
could do. 

Camp was made in the last patch of scrub pines 
at a point which we had come to regard as “‘the part- 
ing of the ways.” For here a definite decision as to 
whether or not we should attempt to break our way 
back across the high passes, already firmly in the grip 
of winter, could no longer be deferred. 

Continuing by the trail we had been following up 
the Poboktan, a low and easy divide would be crossed 
to Brazeau, whence it was easy to work on to the 
plains by comparatively low valleys, with improving 
grazing all the way. 

Clambering up a low ridge above the camp, on the 
other hand, we were face to face with the steep 
mountain wall, of two thousand feet or more, the 
drifting snows of which had to be surmounted before 
reaching another valley and pushing on to a vantage 
from which to tackle a still rougher and more for- 
bidding climb. 

With a mile or more of both passes—the snowy 
and the open one—in full view from the ridge above 
camp, the issue was as clean-cut as it was unavoid- 
able. 

Harmon was still extremely anxious to attempt to 


[248] 


AMVI ANOIIVW AO LOOT LV AadaAL dQ ONILLAS 


Uupuaady “I “JT &q 004d 








THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


make what he had come to call his “snow-picture.” 
There had, of course, been snow and ice in practi- 
cally every shot made from the outset. But this was 
to be a picture in which there was to be nothing but 
snow—with a few incidental horses and men. 
Neither movies nor stills had ever been made in the 
Rockies of a pack-train trying to travel in such 
snows as had already closed down upon the higher 
passes, and the opportunity to make such pictures 
was too good to pass up without a fight. Harmon 
was all for the snows. 

“Soapy,” personally—both for the sake of his 
rheumatism and his horses—would have preferred 
the easier way. His agreement with Harmon, how- 
ever—albeit only a verbal one—was quite explicit in 
the matter of attempting the traverse by the high 
passes. In the same game spirit, therefore, that he 
had gone through with the crossing of the Saskatche- 
wan Glacier and the long vigil under Mount 
Columbia, the old packer now acquiesced in the plan 
to face the snows. 

“Tm willin’ to buck ahead till the horses quit,” he 
said simply, and that settled the matter for the 
present. 

That was our coldest camp by all of ten or fifteen 
degrees. There were some evidences of the place 


[249] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


having been used before, but if any tepee-poles had 
been left, there was no way of finding them save by 
explorative tunnels and shafts in the snow. As it 
was too late to start mining operations, there was 
nothing to be done except make the best camp pos- 
sible without the tepee. 

Harmon swung his diminutive “pup” tent under a 
scraggly balsam. Prolonged search finally uncov- 
ered enough poles to give the cook-tent precarious 
support, and this was turned over to me to sleep in. 
The packers, building a roaring fire and adding all 
of the saddle blankets to their bed-rolls, “chip- 
munked” under a wind-stunted spruce. 

Fortunately there was no wind. No thermometer 
had been included in the outfit, but two traditional 
tests of the old Alaska “sour-dough” gave some line 
on the depth to which the mercury would have 
declined. At midnight the cans of unsweetened 
condensed milk were frozen solid. That meant a 
temperature of a bit below zero. At four in the 
morning the contents of an opened can of sweetened 
condensed milk could not be pierced with the point 
of the blade of a hunting-knife. That indicated from 
ten to fifteen below, with the temperature probably 
continuing to fall until daylight. 

As the cook-fire in front of the tent, which I fed 


[250] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


liberally at frequent intervals during the night, must 
have raised the temperature of the interior by several 
degrees, I am inclined to believe that a thermometer, 
hung up on a tree outside, would have registered 
from twenty to thirty below zero. In spite of this 
little touch of the Arctic, no one complained of hav- 
ing made an especially uncomfortable night of it. 
Certainly we experienced several unhappier ones, 
notably on occasions when storms blew the smoke 
and embers of the fire about the tepee. 

The horses were not hard to find in the morning. 
Unable to locate grass under the deep snow-blanket, 
they had straggled down along the creek and done 
the best they could on willow bark. It was a ter- 
ribly lean and gaunt-looking bunch that was rounded 
up in the rope corral, but most of the units of it still 
had spirit enough to go through the routine tricks 
by way of working off the night’s accumulation of 
cussedness. 

“Jerry,” the movie horse, blew himself up like a 
toy balloon so that there would be slack in his cinches 
after deflation. He had done the same thing every 
morning he was packed since the beginning of 
the trip, but without ever seeming to learn that all 
it brought him was the rough prodding of Bap- 
tie’s high-heeled boot, braced against the puffer’s 


[251] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


ribs in bringing the lash-rope to proper tautness. 

‘“Wolverine” went on the air in his regular daily 
endeavor to broadcast the radio set by standing on 
his forelegs and kicking the hind ones. “Roan” try- 
ing to crook a loving leg around “Soapy’s” neck, and 
“Buckskin” lying down and feigning cramps, were 
vigorous recrudescences of old stuff that gave some 
assurances that something more than the bare spark 
of life could be kept flickering on willow bark. 

Saddling up at.once, Harmon and La Casse, with 
the movie outfit, went on two hours ahead of the main 
outfit. This was primarily for the purpose of at- 
taining a favorable vantage from which to make long 
distance shots of the pack-train as it came winding up 
the pass, but it also gave opportunity for breaking 
trail unhampered by the crowding of horses pressing 
up from behind. 

The whole route to the summit of the pass was 
in full view as soon as we had worked up through 
the timber and come out on the crest of the ridge 
above. Greatly foreshortened, with nothing to 
break the smooth expanse of the snow and give per- 
spective, the ascent appeared even steeper than it 
actually was. The final thousand feet loomed as a 
veritable wall. 

Through the high, thin air the distance to the crest 


[252] 


SLAY ASHHL AO SATIN HONOUHL LHONOUG AYAM SASYOH AHL “AOI GNV MONS AO AdVOSAGNYT V 


fiuvg ‘uousnzy uortg fo Ksajzinoj 











THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


of the divide seemed hardly a pistol-shot. How 
considerable it was, with a hint of the difficulties 
of the going, became evident the instant our squint- 
ing eyes discovered Harmon and La Casse just be- 
ginning to ascend the culminating snow-wall. After 
two hours of floundering through the snow, they had 
covered but two-thirds of the ascent, with much the 
hardest part still remaining to be surmounted. 

Our own progress was made much easier by hav- 
ing only to follow a trail already beaten down by 
the feet of three horses, two men and one dog. Go- 
ing also improved greatly the farther back one was 
located in the line of the pack-train. In my enviable 
station at the rear of the laboring outfit it was really 
not so bad—for a little while. 

As Harmon and La Casse commenced the ascent 
of the final pitch, their figures were silhouetted 
against the white snow with the sharpness of that 
of a soaring aeroplane against the sky. The horses 
looked no bigger than flies crawling on a ceiling, 
with the other figures proportionately more minute; 
yet queer, fluttering movements of the sextette of 
marionettes told the whole story of their desperately 
bitter struggle. 

A twinkling flea in front of a swaying fly was La 
Casse, breaking trail with his own stout legs and 


[253] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


leading his saddle horse. The flea in the rear of two 
other flies was Harmon prodding on the remaining 
horses. A restless, jumping pin-point was “Buster,” 
gambolling in the deep snow and having the time of 
his life as usual. | 

A sudden skidding of two of the flies indicated a 
plunge down the mountainside of as many of the 
horses. As we discovered from the marks later, the 
slide had been all of forty feet. To us, the double 
furrow of ploughed snow appeared about as two- 
inch-long lines on a sheet of paper. 

The struggle to get the rolled horses back on their 
feet was written as clear as sky-writing. One who 
ran could have read it without skipping a line—one 
who ran down hill, I mean to say: To one who la- 
bored up, especially if encumbered with the some- 
thing like forty pounds of clothes with which he had 
fought off the frigid temperatures of the night be- 
fore, reading—even light reading—was not so easy. 
I may as well confess that, for the next three hours, 
I was a lot more concerned with, and deal sorrier 
for, my own puffing, floundering self than for any 
other of the score or more animate units of the outfit. 

To the foot of the steeper incline to the summit it 
was just hard, steady plugging, with increasingly fre- 
quent rests to allow horse and man to recover 


[254] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


breath. Then, by way of a real warming up for the 
final effort, the only possible route turned and led 
across what appeared to be a three hundred-yard- 
wide slide of broken rock slabs of great size, covered 
with from three to five feet of light snow. ‘To the 
labour of plowing through the latter was added the 
danger of broken legs for the horses, an ever- 
imminent risk among big rocks. : 

The three horses with Harmon and La Casse had 
evidently got out of control here, each plunging 
through on a wobbly furrow of his own. Not to be 
outdone, the horses of the main outfit opened out in 
a wide fan and added a dozen more individual trails 
to those of the leading trio. It was all of half an 
hour before we had them bunched again on the 
farther side. 

“Ta Belle” and I had a serious dispute here over 
the right of prior occupancy of a cosy little foot-wide 
crack between two very unstable-minded slabs of 
limestone. Not having as many clothes on as I did, 
the spirited young lady, whom I was leading by her 
bridle, kept pressing impatiently upon my lagging 
footsteps. It was an annoying way she had on hills, 
though it never troubled seriously unless I was try- 
ing to trip lightly from rock to rock, or from bog 
to bog. As long as I had my wits about me, it was 


[255] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


usually easy to keep her at arm’s length with a back- 
extended hand. 

Blowing like a freshly-hooked grampus, and with 
my mind engrossed with the complicated naviga- 
tional problems unfolding at every step across the 
slide, I neglected to give ‘“‘Belle’s”’ on-coming nose 
the straight-arm when skidding hob-nails set me 
sliding into the grip of a rocky pair of yawning jaws. 
As a consequence the mare’s off fore-hoof drove 
down into the hole about a hundredth of a second 
after it had been occupied by my near hind one. 

The rocks—or at least one of them—were as much 
agitated about the difficulty as was “Belle” or my- 
self. The smaller of them lost its balance, but, con- 
trary to what usually happens in a case of the kind, 
teetered outward rather than inward. That relieved 
the jam and allowed me to withdraw my leg and let 
the mare have the hole to herself. 

Her sharp-shod hoof had been planted solidly 
against the side of the toe of my big rubber overshoe, 
but three or four pairs of heavy woollen socks effec- 
tually buffeted the pressure. The rasp of a bridle 
buckle across a whiskered cheek left more of a 
Sting in its wake than the bump from a hoof which 
had been planted a half inch too far to one side to 
do any real harm. 


[256] 


upuMaasy “Y °T €qQ 004g 





ACGIAIG NVLMYOGOd SVNOL WOU 
VLAUVMNOAS OL MAAUD SYNOL JO AATIVA NMOG ONINOOT 


eee 





Photo by L. R. Freeman 


DESCENDING FROM PASS TO 


UPPER JO 


NAS CREEK 





THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


The final thousand feet was just a bit more than 
hard work, for there were two or three places where 
the slope was so sharp that one misstep meant a 
rolled horse and a scattered pack. Helped greatly 
here by the path already broken ahead, we had no 
serious trouble. 

Our worst difficulty on this part of the climb, in- 
deed, came from breaking through the crust of an 
earlier snowfall—probably one put down by the 
storms which had assailed us at the head of the Atha- 
baska. The three feet of new snow on top of this 
crust was enough to carry the horses only if they 
moved steadily ahead. ‘The least bit of floundering 
put them down into the older snow, with the sharp 
edges of the crust gashing their legs. Once through, 
it frequently took many yards of painful wallowing 
before getting back on top of the crust again. 

With five hundred feet more to go, we touched the 
edge of the widening swath of sunshine which was 
slowly rolling back the pall of shadow that had en- 
folded the ravine by which we had ascended. In the 
strange way it has in the rarefied air of high altitudes, 
when there is no wind blowing, the sunlight stabbed 
like a spurt of flame. That sparkling golden shaft 
of light was more than hot—it was burning to the 
skin, blinding to the eyes. 


[257] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


My abused anatomy, toiling in the heart of the 
ponderous pile of wrappings which had protected 
it from the Arctic rigours of the night, had been de- 
veloping the temperature of a Turkish bath even in 
the shadows. With the touch of that withering 
wave of sunlight the genial warmth of the Ham- 
maam was converted to the scorching heat of the 
furnace-blast. 

Regardless of my hitherto jealously maintained 
place at the rear of the line, I checked “La Belle” 
and commenced a swift stripping off of superfluous 
garments. A shooting jacket had followed a fifteen- 
pound duffle coat, and a sweater and lumber-jack’s 
shirt were next in order for the bundle to be lashed 
to the pommel of ‘‘Belle’s” saddle, when a far- 
carried shout assailed my ears from the crest of the 
pass. It was Harmon, who had been watching my 
disrobing act with his glass, yelling through cupped 
hands. 

“Leave ’em all on!” he was shouting. ‘Look bet- 
ter for movie!” 

Realizing that I ought to humour the veteran after 
all his work in helping to break out the trail, I called 
him a few lurid names and then did as he asked. 
Almost down on my hands and knees at the finish, I 
dragged my reeling bulk up to the summit a good 


[258] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


two hundred yards astern of the last of the horses. 
The interval was so great that Harmon had to make 
a separate shot of my arrival. 

Turning “La Belle” over to the packers, I slunk 
off and slithered down in the snow. Presently Har- 
mon came over and began speaking. 

“Sorry to have troubled you to drag all those togs 
up that last stretch on your back,” he said. “Great 
waste of energy; also of film. It wouldn’t do, you 
know, to run a shot of a man bundled up in that 
North Pole rig-out just after ‘‘Soapy” and Rob had 
reached the top in their shirt sleeves!” 

“Wow!” I had the wind for just one demoniac 
yell; but faltering flesh denied the demand of out- 
raged spirit that I run Harmon down and beat him 
into insensibility. 

Resting for half an hour on the warm, windless 
summit to breathe the horses and relash the packs, 
we began the descent of the southern side of the pass 
to the broad, open valley of Jonas Creek. There 
was not much to choose between one slope and the 
other. Neither side had a trail, or, if it had, there 
was no finding it. Snow was drifted deeper on the 
Jonas slope, but there was no place where the horses 
could roll far without regaining their feet, and no 
death-trap of a rock-slide to cross. 


[259] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


Several times horses which strayed from the line 
of descent carefully broken out by “‘Soapy,” dropped 
over low ledges to disappear from sight in the drifts 
below. After a billowing and heaving of the snowy 
blanket, a wobbly hump would begin to run through 
the soft mass, and presently a horse came wallowing 
out below, not any the worse for the experience. 

Harmon was almost in tears because these falls, 
with their subsequent tunnellings, kept eluding a 
movie shot. Old ‘“Soapy,” however, already begin- 
ning to feel his first touch of snow-blindness, sternly 
refused to delay progress by staging the action. We 
were over the pass, he said, but had only made a 
quarter of the distance that would have to be covered 
before reaching a camp in the timber. It was no 
time for frills. We were still well above the timber 
even after dropping down fifteen hundred feet or 
more to Jonas Creek. Here we began a gradual as- 
cent of several miles which carried us over a hardly 
perceptible divide to Ram Creek, running down to 
the Brazeau on the east. Deep drifts were still 
troublesome here, but the worst trial was that of the 
glare. 

Search through the packs for snow-glasses at the 
previous camp had revealed that these almost indis- 
pensable protectors had been sent off by mistake at 

[260] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


Jasper. “Soapy’s” eyes gave out in the first mile up 
Jonas Creek, Baptie taking his place at breaking trail 
at the head of the line. When the glare-dazzled 
snows had inflamed the wrangler’s eyes to such a de- 
gree that they could no longer judge fall and dis- 
tance, La Casse took the lead and held it on down 
Ram Creek to the timber. 

Harmon and I felt the glare badly as long as we 
continued taking pictures, but the irritation was 
eased a good deal when we returned to line and re- 
duced the dazzling landscape to a narrow peep-hole 
by pulling down “Balaclavas”’ or puckering the 
strings of parka-hoods. It was the trail-breaker, 
forced to expose and use his eyes every moment, who 
had the hardest time. 

Our camp on the Brazeau, just above the mouth 
of the Ram, was the most comfortable we had 
pitched since leaving Maligne Lake. It was on a 
sheltered bench, a thousand feet below timber-line. 
There was still much snow, but on the level river 
flats this had blown thin in places, so that the horses 
lost little time in pawing through to the grass. 

Because of having been frozen and buried in the 
snow while it was still green and uncured, the grass 
was hardly as nourishing as it looked. It was so 
much better than the horses had enjoyed for a long 

[261 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


time, however, that “‘Soapy” was anxious to remain 
over a day or two to give them a good feed of it be- 
fore tackling the next high pass, now looming high 
above us to the south. 

‘“Soapy’s” eyes were in the worst plight from the 
snows, but even he did not have a spell of complete 
blindness. None of us had a comfortable night, 
however, and all were complaining of the sensitive- 
ness of their eyes to glare during the remainder 
of the trip. Fortunately, most of the rest of our 
traverses above timber-line were made in cloudy 
weather. 

The irritation of the membranes of the eyes inci- 
dent to what is commonly called snow-blindness, was 
graphically described by an old Alaskan “sour- 
dough” friend of mine as “like a handful of red-hot 
sand chucked under your lids.” 

The horses looked so much better, after their 
day of rest and improved grazing, that we had about 
decided to give them another one, when the radio 
brought in word which seemed to make further delay 
out of the question. A general storm which had 
broken upon the northern Pacific coast, KGO in- 
formed us, was expected to continue for several days. 

Judging by the experience we had already had 
with storms the radio had told us were working 


[262 | 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


eastward from the ocean, this meant that the 
moisture-laden clouds would be condensing upon 
the high peaks of the continental divide during the 
night, and that we would find it snowing in the morn- 
ing. Beating the storm across the next pass—the 
worst one remaining to be surmounted—before it 
developed to blizzard proportions was our only 
chance to continue through the high mountains and 
complete Harmon’s “‘snow-picture.” 

A gusty northwest wind began scattering the tepee 
fire a little after midnight. Before morning it was 
blowing hard and purposefully, accompanied by 
flurries of snow, dry and powdery enough to have 
come from the Arctic. The clouds themselves were 
high, but already the peaks flanking the pass were 
obscured in clouds of wind-driven snow. 

“Soapy” shook his head dubiously, as he blinked 
through goggled eyes at the fluttering sheets of white- 
ness masking the notch of the pass, and reckoned we 
would be scurrying back to the valley before noon- 
day to thaw out our ears. Just the same, he added, 
he was game to go on with the geezly stunt—quite 
ready to stick it out as long as the cayuses would. 
Five minutes later he was leading the pack-train 
across the wind-swept flats to the mouth of Ewe 
Creek, by which the ascent was to be made. 


[263 |] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


For a mile we toiled up ‘through close-growing 
timber, where the wind reached us only in spinning 
gusts. Not until we came out to an open plateau 
above the last of the trees did we feel the full force 
of the gathering storm. The first blow of it seemed 
almost as solid as the slap from the side of a board, 
and one had to close his mouth and breathe slowly 
through contracted nostrils to keep the flying ice 
particles out of his lungs. 

For a few minutes—until the more pressing need 
of things made demand upon mind as well as body— 
a verse of “Screw-Guns” kept running through my 
head. 


“The eagles is screamin’ around us, the river’s 
a-moanin’ below, 
We're clear o’ the pine an’ the oak-scrub, we’re 
out on the rocks an’ the snow, 
An’ the wind is as thin as a whip-lash what carries 
away to the plains | 
The rattle an’ stamp o’ the lead-mules—the jinglety- 
jink o’ the chains—” 


For a half-mile, where the last aspiring tongue of 
stunted trees ran out in wind-flattened bushes, we 
had to watch closely for the snow-covered hummocks 
to keep from floundering onto and breaking through 
them. ‘Then these were left behind, the last of the 


[264 ] 


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SSVd LIPGVY ALIHM OL dO ONIAWITO 


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We a a 














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MagAD WVU AHL AO SMONS AHL 


NI 





GNNOUWAAOA NI AMVT OLNId HLIM ‘NVWAT00 “LW JO dISSVW AMIT-AULVIHLIHdWY FHL 
ung ‘uomspy uostg fo ksaqanoy 


7 . , 7 wi ” tt eer taa 











THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


jutting rock pinnacles were drifted over, and we 
tunnelled upward in a universe of unbroken white- 
ness. ) 

Just how much of the snow which assailed us as we 
struggled up between the converging walls of the 
pass came direct from the clouds it was impossible 
to tell. It was snowing, and snowing hard; yet there 
is little doubt that nine-tenths of the whirling blan- 
ket enfolding was made up of drift, blown from the 
peaks three and four thousand feet above. Borne 
by conflicting gusts, this struck us from all directions. 
When it came from directly ahead it was impossible 
to penetrate it with the eye. We could only blink, 
owl-like, until the next gust brought the blinding 
cloud behind us and made it possible to open the 
eyes again. | 

I had faced heavy winds in many of the great 
passes of the Andes and Himalayas, but never a real 
storm. My outstanding memory of this occasion 
was the terrific roaring of the winds among crags 
and cliffs which were entirely cut off from sight by 
driven snow. It seemed impossible that a sound so 
deep and raucous could come from the friction of 
air on rock. ‘Time and time again I reined in my 
horse in the fear that an avalanche was descending 
just ahead, only to find that I was shrinking from the 


[ 265] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


threat of a bugaboo no more tangible than thin air. 
Yet I have seen whole mountain-sides of rock go 
down with no deeper, more savage a roar. 

“Soapy,” Baptie and La Casse—on foot, of 
course—took turns at breaking trail. This was quite 
as hard work for the man who did it as on the 
steeper ascent to the Poboktan-Jonas Pass, but it was 
far less helpful to the men and horses following. 
This was because of the terrific rate of drift. If an 
interval of fifty yards opened up in the line, the trail 
for the bunch behind had to be broken out anew. 
Half a minute would completely obliterate a three- 
feet-deep trench beaten down by the passage of a 
dozen horses. | 

The horses were wonderful—more sensible and 
easier to control than I remember them at any other 
crisis of the trip. Anything less than the spirit they 
showed in bucking the drifts in that savage storm 
would have forced us to turn back a mile above 
timber-line. As it was, slowly but fairly steadily, we 
worked them through to the shelter of a ledge which 
La Casse recalled as being almost immediately be- 
low the summit. 

It looked as if we had won the fight—that all was 
over but the inevitable shouting which would ac- 
company the long, easy drive down Cascade Creek 


[ 266 ] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


on the other side. We even talked a little of the 
nice, warm, comfortable camp we were going to 
make in the thick timber of the flats of the Cline, 
which we ought to reach in three or four hours. 

All of which made it a bit more of a shock when, 
with the horses well rested, we pushed out from be- 
low the sheltering ledge to find our way blocked by 
what appeared to be an impassable wall of snow. 
Ulus remembered the place as a very steep pitch of 
broken rock. Snow, drifting over the crest of the 
pass, had converted this into an almost sheer slope. 

“Soapy,” anxious to avoid discouraging the horses 
by unnecessary exertion, went at the task of sounding 
out the barrier coolly and methodically. At point 
after point we would tread out a trail on foot, only to 
have the first horse break through the crust below 
and go down over his ears. 

As a last resort, ‘‘Soapy,” leading an astonishingly 
agile and stout-hearted Indian pony called “Roan,” 
worked along the base of the snow-wall and at- 
tempted to reach the summit by zigzagging up the 
less deeply buried slope beyond. Here, with the 
help of Baptie and La Casse, he was finally success- 
ful. 

Leaving “Roan” on the summit, the men came 
back and started the remainder of the pack-train. 


[267 ] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


All went well along the base of the snow-wall, but 
when the first zigzag was reached the leading horses 
began pounding their way through a deeply-covered 
crust which had supported the light-stepping 
“Roan.” Dropped almost out of sight, several of 
the nervous animals started to wallow around in 
their tracks and start back down the slope into the ~ 
line of horses bunched below. 

With three of the animals beaten and ready to quit, 
the packers made extraordinary efforts to prevent 
the spirit of defeat from spreading among their 
mates. Once a pack-train gives up a crucial strug- 
gle of the kind in which we were now engaged, 
there is nothing left to do but turn back. Doubtless 
that is what would have happened in the present in- 
stance had the quitters been allowed to swing back 
and demoralize the rest of the outfit. 

Calling on Harmon and me to help them, the men 
brought the leading animals back on to the trail, and 
then—five men to a horse—we dragged them, one 
at a time, up to the wind-swept summit. After the 
first three or four had gone the route, the trail was 
beaten deep enough to make it possible for the others 
to go up without other than vocal help. 

Harmon, unlimbering his movie camera, made a 
shot of the tail of the procession. It was a pity, of 


[ 268 ] 


THROUGH SNOWS TO BANFF 


course, that at least a few feet of film could not have 
been cranked on some of those first sounding floun- 
ders. 

It was a long, tedious descent to the Cline, but we 
made it just before dark, to pitch a camp no whit less 
comfortable and cosy than the one we had pictured 
in fancy under the snowy ledge below the summit of 
the pass. Lower than we had been for many days, 
there were spots in the flats where the grass was ac- 
tually showing above the snow. 

The storm did not follow us down to the valley, 
though we could see for two days where it was raging 
among the high peaks and passes. There is no pos- 
sibility that we could have crossed the Brazeau-Cline 
divide a day later. Beyond all doubt, our radio 
had saved his long-dreamed-of “snow-picture” for 
Harmon. 

We made an easy stage of it to beautiful Pinto 
Lake the day after crossing from the Brazeau. Here 
we left the snow for a while, not to be bothered with 
it again until we reached the head of the White- 
rabbit, beyond the Saskatchewan. ‘There was snow 
at several passes between there and Banff, but not 
enough at any point to make serious trouble. 

Once down to the Saskatchewan, at the mouth of 
the Cline, we had a well-travelled trail all the way 


[269] 


ON THE ROOF OF THE ROCKIES 


south. More important still, the route led by val- 
leys famous for the finest grazing in all the Rockies. 
With grass for our long-starved horses and Har- 
mon’s “‘snow-picture” complete, there was really very 
little left to worry about. 

One night toward the end of our journey, the 
radio, in spite of the waning strength of batteries 
which had served all the time since leaving Lake 
Louise, picked up a station in Davenport, lowa. A 
local seed-company was sponsoring the program, 
which consisted very largely of the proud reading of 
telegrams attesting that they had been heard in sev- 
eral neighboring counties, and even in Nebraska and 
Illinois. 3 

I only wish there could have been some way we 
could have winged them word of how and where our 
funny looking outfit was listening-in upon them. 

With the horses picking up weight and strength 
all the way, we.cantered into Banff on October 24th, 
ten weeks after our departure from Lake Louise. 
Not one horse had been lost; not one had been perma- 
nently lamed, in the whole course of what was prob- 
ably the roughest continuous pack-train journey 
made in the Rockies since the time of the pioneers. 

It was a notable achievement for our packers. 


[270] 











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